By Dr. Robert Thorson

I have a secret love affair to confess. It’s rekindled each spring at about the time college students shed their winter clothing and begin to study half-naked in the sun. My secret spring love is not with damsels or daffodils, but with dust. Good old-fashioned silicate grit.

As students spread out on a campus near you, local work crews are on spring cleanup duty. They’re gathering up the tons of sand spread copiously on our roads last winter. Sweepers sweep under conditions ideal for launching dust into the air, sometimes creating clouds so dense that traffic stops.

Dust is a problem in my home and yours. It creates health problems for those with respiratory conditions. Many businesses must keep their workplaces free of aerosol contaminants. But in spite of these headaches, I take secret delight in dust season.

The late comedian Rodney Dangerfield could have said that dust “just don’t get no respect.” Indeed, the downside of dust is something we are all familiar with. But the upside of dust is something known to just a few. Good things in life come from pulverized rock.

Dust brings equality. Rich and poor, urban and rural, young and old, gleaming yachts and hard-luck fishing boats: All are sprinkled the same. Dust from poverty-stricken regions of sub-Saharan Africa flies eastward on the trade winds to the poolside lounge chairs of Caribbean resorts.

Dust brings bread. The finest wheat-producing districts of the world occur on soils made by windblown dust. The North American Prairie, Europe’s Ukraine, the Argentine Pampas and the Yellow River headwaters in China — the so-called breadbaskets of the world — overlie wind-transported deposits that geologists call loess, a German word for brick earth.

Dust brings memories. U.S. residents who move east from drier places out west or north are reminded of home when they see the silt sparkle. When I moved to New England from Alaska more than 20 years ago, I noticed that Connecticut dust was full of oddball microscopic things such as pollen, soot, salt, organic fibers and dead bacteria.

Dust where I had come from was mostly glacial flour spread out on sandy floodplains, whisked up into the air and then sprinkled over the land. This region’s seasonal dose of dust brings with it memories of less humid lands.

Dust brings seafood. Iron is an essential element for life. Iron enters the ocean within rivertransported clay, from thermal springs and in the upwelling of deep water, but much of the world ocean remains deficient in iron. In such places, the iron arrives mostly as terrestrial dust blown off the continents and then brought down by tropical and subtropical rainfall. Wind transport remains the most important source of iron for photosynthetic plankton over much of the world ocean.

Such phytoplankton — green algae and diatoms — is then eaten by zooplankton, which is eaten by small fish and shellfish, which are eaten by lobsters and bigger fish, which are eaten by sharks and swordfish, which are eaten by the largest predators of all, killer whales and fishing boats. In such circumstances, the whole marine food chain commences with dust.

Dust brings global cooling. Scientists have experimented with adding iron-rich dust to the surface ocean. The addition of this limiting nutrient stimulated the growth of plankton biomass, thereby lowering the concentration of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide in the water. Eventually, this will lead to a reduced concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. Another positive benefit of iron fertilization experiments has been to increase the concentration of something called dimethyl sulfide, which scatters solar radiation and cools the climate. Few scientists believe that we can engineer our way out of global warming using iron-rich dust. Nevertheless, there is reason to be guardedly optimistic that it might be part of a solution.

Finally, dust brings humility. The prophet Ecclesiastes said, “All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.” Watching dust settle is a reminder that each and every one of us exists within the grand earthly cycle of time. Spring dust helps bring a resurgence of life.