Australia’s dust storm reaches New Zealand

New Zealand residents found a thin layer of fine red dust on cars and windows today. A large dust storm in the Australian desert blew up a huge cloud of dust which has travelled on the winds for thousands of miles and deposited itself in New Zealand. Quite a bizarre event but not totally unprecedented. A few years ago an algal bloom off the coast of Australia made its way across the Tasman Sea and hit new Zealand shores, polluting the local shellfish and making it toxic to humans for several months. So is there anything nasty in this dust and what health hazards does it present, if any? Is this Australia’s way of telling us to eat its dust??