Iceland's Volcano May Affect Economy, Weather, Health Worldwide

"Ice chunks the size of houses tumbled down from a volcano beneath Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull glacier on Thursday, as hot gases melted the ice.

The volcano began erupting on Wednesday for the second time in less than a month.

Torrents of water filled with ash and pumice roared down the steep slopes of the volcano."

"Inhaling silica into your respiratory system can lead to a deadly, chronic lung disease called silicosis that can damage the lungs and heart," Alvarez said. "It also increases the potential of developing lung cancer."

Silicosis is an incurable, irreversible lung disease that progresses even after exposure has ended.

WHO spokesman Daniel Epstein said Europeans who venture outside might want to consider a mask. Alvarez agrees this is a good idea, especially for people with lung conditions."

"When the Laki volcano erupted in 1783, it caused a cloud of poison gas to drift to Britain, where hundreds died.  The smog and ash caused famines in Western Europe.  Crop production plunged.  The winter of 1784 was one of the coldest in history, with the Mississippi River freezing as far south as New Orleans.  The last time there was a major eruption in Iceland, flooding followed within minutes of the hot lava hitting the glaciers, with house-sized boulders tumbling down mountains.

Pompeii was nothing compared to what might happen when Iceland's volcanoes wake from their long slumber.  The whole world is going to know when that happens, no question about it.  It's only a matter of time."

The British naturalist Gilbert White and American Ben Franklin wrote in 1783 that "a peculiar haze" hung over Europe, the Atlantic Ocean and America for many weeks. Most of the livestock in Iceland died, along with 25% of the country's population.

"The sun, at noon, looked as blank as a clouded moon, and shed a rust-coloured ferruginous light on the ground, and floors of rooms; but was particularly lurid and blood-coloured at rising and setting. At the same time the heat was so intense that butchers' meat could hardly be eaten on the day after it was killed; and the flies swarmed so in the lanes and hedges that they rendered the horses half frantic ... the country people began to look with a superstitious awe, at the red, louring aspect of the sun."

"The eruption is now thought to have disrupted the Asian monsoon cycle, prompting famine in Egypt. Environmental historians have also pointed to the disruption caused to the economies of northern Europe, where food poverty was a major factor in the build-up to the French revolution of 1789."

"Both volcanoes erupted in 1612 and 1821-23, but Katla has also gone off on its own many times, most recently in 1918. One of the largest eruptions in Iceland's history, by volume, came in the years 934 to 940 when Katla spewed more than 18 cubic kilometers of lava onto the countryside. The Icelandic Meteorological Office, the Nordic Volcanological Center and other institutions monitor both volcanoes with GPS, seismic and other equipment.

Like Eyjafjallajökull, Katla lies beneath a glacier, and the combination of its larger size and the overlying ice makes it far more dangerous, scientists say. When an erupting volcano melts ice, floods known as jökulhlaups can come pouring out suddenly. Flooding from the Eyjafjallajökull eruption has already caused hundreds of people to evacuate."