The Eyjafjallajökull eruption in 2010 grounded 100,000 flights across Europe. Not because of lava—lava’s actually pretty bad at traveling long distances. No, it was the ash. Tiny glass shards and pulverized rock hanging in the air like the world’s worst snow globe.
When Your Lungs Meet Something That Used to Be Mountain
Here’s the thing about volcanic ash: it’s not really ash at all. It’s rock. Microscopic fragments of what used to be solid earth, now airborne and ready to wreck your respiratory system. Each particle is jagged, angular, abrasive—nothing like the soft, fluffy ash from your fireplace. In 1980, when Mount St. Helens exploded, the ash cloud reached 15 miles into the atmosphere. People in Spokane, Washington—250 miles away—couldn’t see across the street. Emergency rooms flooded with patients complaining of breathing difficulties, eye irritation, and what felt like sandpaper coating their throats.
Turns out your lungs weren’t designed for inhaling geology.
The particles range from coarse sand down to smaller than pollen grains—less than 10 micrometers. Those tiny ones? They slip right past your body’s defenses. Your nose hairs, the mucus in your airways, the little cilia waving around like underwater plants—none of it stops particles that small. They burrow deep into your alveoli, those delicate air sacs where oxygen swaps places with carbon dioxide. And then they just sit there, causing inflamation and scarring.
The Mask Situation Nobody Wants to Hear About But Should
So you rush out to buy masks during an eruption. Smart, right? Wait—maybe not if you grab just any mask. Those surgical masks everyone hoarded during the pandemic? Nearly useless against volcanic ash. The weave is too loose. You need N95 respirators minimum, properly fitted, creating a seal around your face. In 1991, when Mount Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines, displacing hundreds of thousands of people, health workers discovered most evacuees were wearing masks incorrectly—gaps around the nose, loose straps, reusing disposable masks until they disintegrated.
The ash was still getting through.
At Rabaul in Papua New Guinea in 1994, residents learned this the hard way. Two volcanoes—Vulcan and Tavurvur—erupted simultaneously, burying the town under ash. Hospitals reported a spike in respiratory infections lasting months. Children and elderly suffered most. The problem wasn’t just the initial exposure but the re-suspension. Every footstep, every gust of wind, every car driving down the road kicked ash back into the air. It became a grinding, abrasive presence in daily life, impossible to escape.
Why Staying Indoors Sounds Simple Until It Absolutely Isn’t
Public health officials always say the same thing: stay indoors, close all windows, turn off ventilation systems that bring in outside air. Sounds straightforward. Except volcanic eruptions don’t check your schedule. The 2018 Kilauea eruption in Hawaii lasted four months. Four months of staying sealed inside while lava destroyed 700 homes and ash fell like apocalyptic snow. People had to venture out eventually—for food, for work, for sanity.
That’s when things get complicated, logistically speaking.
You need to create an ash-free zone inside your home. Seal windows and doors with damp towels. Run air purifiers if you have them—HEPA filters specifically, because nothing else catches particles that small. Keep a bucket of water by every entrance for washing ash off shoes before coming inside. Change clothes immediately. Shower. Don’t track that stuff through your living space. In Quito, Ecuador, Cotopaxi volcano sends ash drifting over the city regularly. Residents have developed whole routines: plastic sheeting over electronics, wet mopping instead of sweeping (which just launches particles airborne again), checking air quality indexes before deciding whether kids can play outside.
The Part Where Your Eyes Also Hate Volcanic Ash Intensley
Oh, and your eyes? They’re just as vulnerable as your lungs, maybe more so. Those same microscopic rock fragments that shred lung tissue also scratch corneas. Contact lens wearers are particularly screwed—the lenses trap ash against the eye, grinding away with every blink. During the 1991 Mount Hudson eruption in Chile, ophthalmologists treated hundreds of cases of corneal abrasion. Some patients developed infections that threatened their vision permanently.
Goggles become essential, not optional. Not sunglasses—actual goggles that seal around your eyes. Swimming goggles work in a pinch. You’ll look ridiculous, but you’ll look ridiculous with functioning corneas, so there’s that.
What Happens After the Volcano Finally Shuts Up
The eruption ends, the ash settles, and everyone thinks it’s over. Wrong. The ash doesn’t disappear—it just stops falling from the sky. It coats everything: roofs, streets, vegetation, water supplies. In Montserrat, where the Soufrière Hills volcano has been erupting intermittently since 1995, the southern half of the island remains an exclusion zone. Buildings are entombed in ash and mud. When wind picks up, it lofts the old ash back into the air. Residents on the northern side still check ash advisories before hanging laundry outside.
Cleanup is its own nightmare. Sweeping is terrible—creates dust clouds. Hosing works better, but then you’re creating an abrasive slurry that clogs drains and contaminates water systems. The ash weighs down roofs. After the 2011 Puyehue-Cordón Caulle eruption in Chile, several buildings in Bariloche, Argentina collapsed under the weight—not from lava, not from earthquakes, just from the sheer mass of ash accumulation.
Your lungs remember volcanic eruptions long after the mountain goes quiet. Studies of Mount St. Helens survivors show persistent respiratory issues decades later—chronic bronchitis, reduced lung function, increased susceptibility to pneumonia. The mountain made its mark, microscopically, permanently, in the soft tissue of thousands of people who happened to be breathing in the wrong place at the wrong time.
