THE BIG VOG & THE RUST IT BRINGS
Around March 2008 Madame Pele, for reasons only she knows, opened up another puka higher on the mountain and began puffing and blowing out a great deal more volcano breath than she had been for quite some time. (Since then even more vents have opened up.) Those gases look like thick London Fog of yesteryear coating the land, but it’s not. Of course, as you know the fact that it looks like fog is why it came to be known as VOG (Volcano fog).
There’s much more than meets the eye with VOG. It contains many nasty particulates and toxins. I’m sure you know about the negative health effects as well as the damage VOG can do to plants. Big Island farmers have been hurt by the VOG and the harm it’s done to their crops.
However, something that some have overlooked (and it’s easy to do) is to notice how much VOG speeds up the rate something is rusting.
Sulfur Dioxide is one of the main components of VOG. (When sulfur is burned in the presence of oxygen you get Sulfur Dioxide or S02.) When moisture vapor is added to the Sulfur Dioxide it chemically changes into sulfuric acid. This is what produces acid rain and it is this sulfuric acid, which is falling on all our properties and structures, and speeding up the rate at which metal rusts. Sometimes it seems like something is rusting at “the speed of light” since the VOG came. Obviously that’s an exaggeration, but the rate at which the VOG speeds up rusting has shocked me a number of times.
I myself have incurred unnecessary damage because I did not realize this was happening until it became obnoxious. Of course, it’s older metal that had a bit of rust on it to begin with, even before the Big VOG came, that is the most susceptible to this new “speed of light” rusting. But any metal that can rust will move in that direction faster than ever before under this heavy VOG.
There are rust converters and rust stoppers, some of which are non-toxic, (the last thing we need is more toxins in the environment) that can be used to treat whatever is rusting and halt the cycle of rusting. After the treatment then the metal can be top coated with whatever you’d like.
If you haven’t already done it, you might want to consider walking around your property, inside and out of every area and building, taking notes as you go to see if anything is rusting. I’ve found things rusting away that I never ever worried about rusting at all. If you are off island, at this time, and won’t be back for a while you might ask a friend or relative to do this “rust inspection” for you. Or contact any officer or board member for assistance regarding this matter.
This VOG is hard on the environment and everything in it and metal is no exception.

Good Luck.

Carol Simms
5/3/09