Vog???

Last week while checking one of my daily 'bookmarked' web sites I noticed a new word in the body of the copy.  It's a NASA website that everyday shows wonderful pictures of the planet we live on. Some days the pictures blow my mind.

Anyway, last week one of the pictures used the word 'vog', describing what looked like fog in the picture.  I figured it was probably a typo which is something I'm very familiar and let it go at that.

Then this morning the picture was of the Hawaiian Islands from space and superimposed on it was the word 'vog'.  Now I'm very curious what the heck is 'vog'? I scroll down to the article hoping I might discover what 'vog' is.  This time I got lucky.  First, it's not a typo. It is an actual something.

According to the article, 'vog' is a haze that is a combination of fog, smog and volcanic gas...in other words pollution.  According to the (Hawaiian Volcano Observatory) "Vog is scientifically defined as “a visible haze comprised of gas and an aerosol of tiny particles and acidic droplets, created when sulfur dioxide and other gases chemically interact with sunlight and atmospheric oxygen, moisture, and dust.”"  Wow, that sounds awful.

I decided to check my dictionary, which was published in 1999 to see if the word was listed there, it wasn't.  I'm not sure why, but that surprised me.  So I decided to delve into this vexing word 'vog'.

It is mentioned in Wikipedia, but strictly from a scientific observation. I wanted to know its origin. Of course this can't be 100% substantiated, but I learned there are at least two possibilities. One is that a Hawaiian Teruo 'Buddy' Watanabe coined the word as far back as 1965, while the other states Reginald "Reggie" Okamura used the word sometime during the mid 1980's.  I guess it doesn't matter who coined the word or when, apparently 'vog' has become a serious problem in Hawaii not only causing polluted skies but health issues as well.  So much for paradise.

I'm beginning to think there is no such place as paradise, some places have smog, some places have fog and now Hawaii has 'vog'.  I guess no matter where we live on this gigantic blue marble problems arise everywhere and maybe we need to work on the ones in our own little corner of it. It's time we had better do something...it's almost too late.