  We present arguments based on the measured abundances in individual damped
Lyman alpha systems (DLAs) and sub-damped Lyman alpha systems (sub-DLAs), and
also the average abundances inferred in large samples of QSO absorption line
systems, to suggest that the amount of dust in intervening QSO absorbers is
small and is not responsible for missing many QSOs in magnitude limited QSO
surveys. While we can not totally rule out a bimodal dust distribution with a
population of very dusty, metal rich, absorbers which push the background QSOs
below the observational threshold of current optical spectroscopic studies,
based upon the current samples it appears that the metallicity in QSO absorbers
decreases with increase in H I column densities beyond 10^{19} cm^{-2}. Thus
the sub-DLA population is more metal rich than the DLAs, a trend which may
possibly extend to the non-damped Lyman limit systems (NDLLS). Based on the
recently discovered mass-metallicity relation for galaxies, we suggest that
most sub-DLAs and possibly NDLLS, are associated with massive spiral/elliptical
galaxies while most DLAs are associated with low mass galaxies. The sub-DLA
galaxies will then contribute a larger fraction of total mass (stellar and ISM)
and therefore metals, to the cosmic budget, specially at low redshifts, as
compared to the DLAs.
