Cloud-seeding safe, experts explain

BEIJING - With efforts to manipulate the weather and induce precipitation intensifying because of the drought that has hit much of China, atmospheric experts have been reassuring the public that the release of chemicals into the sky will not hurt the environment.

"The impact of weather manipulation can be ignored because the dose of the catalyst is too small to cause a problem," said Lei Hengchi, a professor specializing in weather intervention at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

While silver iodide - the most common catalyst used to encourage clouds to discharge their water - is considered a hazardous substance and a toxic pollutant, the quantities used are not large enough to have any effect on the environment, he explained.