Smoke, Smog, Dust 2018 Chiang Mai

[vivid]

Still not clearing for Wat Chan in CM Province! Actually at such prolonged + high levels, you can be sure that the health effects are going to be very bad and affects many folks there who cannot leave for one reason or another.

 

Remember that In end March and early April, the air was also pretty bad there already.

 

[vivid]

19 minutes ago, canopy said:

The air quality drops below international standards for clean air very quickly after the rains stop usually around October. After that it's just a matter of discussing how bad it is all the way until around May. That's a long time; 6-8 months of bad air per year. People like to talk in relative terms "not as bad as last year", "not as bad as last month". Well I hate to tell you but that doesn't change the fact the air still is not meeting international standards for clean air and that should raise some alarm bells.

4 hours ago, markcm19 said:

Air is still terrible... longest burning season yet? At this rate, by next year we will have 1/3 of the year being unhealthy.

 

Yeah, this year is especially "amazing".

[HaleySabai]

The Wat Chan area is not part of Chiang Mai province. It became a new provincial realm,named after Princess Galyani Vadhana who lived in Vancouver,Canada and passed away a few years back.

 

This district is absolutely hardcore for hazardous air quality. Would be a perfect place for CMU to conduct a long term study of the consequences of health effects on the local population as well as an ecological/environmental assessment.

 

A few days ago ChiangMai was pushed back to no#48 rank of the top 50 worst polluted cities.

Some good rain and wind can sure clear up the environment quickly. However, today we are back in the top 5...again.   It's been a record breaking fire-season.

 

[vivid]

What the.......

 

[vivid]

5 hours ago, HaleySabai said:

The Wat Chan area is not part of Chiang Mai province. It became a new provincial realm,named after Princess Galyani Vadhana who lived in Vancouver,Canada and passed away a few years back.

 

This district is absolutely hardcore for hazardous air quality. Would be a perfect place for CMU to conduct a long term study of the consequences of health effects on the local population as well as an ecological/environmental assessment.

 

A few days ago ChiangMai was pushed back to no#48 rank of the top 50 worst polluted cities.

Some good rain and wind can sure clear up the environment quickly. However, today we are back in the top 5...again.   It's been a record breaking fire-season.

 

Oh i see.  I am just relying on google.   ????

 

https://maps.me/catalog/health/amenity-hospital/wat-chan-hospital-9223372037172331206/

 

 

BTW i noticed this pinkish dotted line on aqicn, would this be demarcating Mae Hong Son and Chiang Mai provinces?  And of course to the east, between Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai/Lampang provinces.

 

Edited April 30, 2019 by vivid

[bubba]

5 hours ago, HaleySabai said:

The Wat Chan area is not part of Chiang Mai province. It became a new provincial realm,named after Princess Galyani Vadhana who lived in Vancouver,Canada and passed away a few years back.

 

This district is absolutely hardcore for hazardous air quality. Would be a perfect place for CMU to conduct a long term study of the consequences of health effects on the local population as well as an ecological/environmental assessment.

 

A few days ago ChiangMai was pushed back to no#48 rank of the top 50 worst polluted cities.

Some good rain and wind can sure clear up the environment quickly. However, today we are back in the top 5...again.   It's been a record breaking fire-season.

 

OT but...I think you will find that Princess Galyani did not live in Vancouver. In her later years beginning in 1988, she lived in her chalet at Doi Tung. She fell ill in 2007 and resided at Siriraj Hospital until she passed away in 2008. King Bhumibol bestowed the name and Galyani Vadhana District was officially decreed in 2009. Galyani Vadhana District is part of Chiang Mai Province.

[markcm19]

an acquaintance of mine just had a child die from lung infection yesterday. They do not believe it had anything to do with the air quality, but I am not convinced...

[vivid]

34 minutes ago, markcm19 said:

an acquaintance of mine just had a child die from lung infection yesterday. They do not believe it had anything to do with the air quality, but I am not convinced...

 

Wow.....RIP to that poor little fella.   ????

 

Of course we shouldn't be too quick to jump to conclusions as there are many other factors as well.  Without a post-morterm done, we'll never know.

 

In Indonesia 2015 the exact same things happened.  There are a lot more unofficial cases, mainly kids and elderly/chronically sick, simply coz there are many of such extremely poor families in pretty remote locations that cannot even afford healthcare as it'd need a few good hours ferry trip to the nearest decent hospital.  These will never get reported, already have some in my wife's hometown (population of a few tens of thousand of people, not even a small remote village, but good healthcare there is really lacking and actually my in-laws travel to Singapore to get any good treatment)

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Southeast_Asian_haze

Most of the victims killed by the haze were students and newborn babies.^[67] A nine-year-old third-grade student died because of the smoke and the doctors and nurses who tried to save the child reported that the child's lungs were fully filled with smoke. A 15-month-old baby also died in Jambi. The photos of the dead body, taken with the baby's mother, went viral on Facebook.

 

We will never anywhere get a firm number to the number of mortality with these things, unfortunately.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-37404515

Indonesia haze may have led to 100,000 premature deaths, says report

 

Edited April 30, 2019 by vivid

[HaleySabai]

Wat Chan was renamed after the Princess as a new district in ChiangMai province. Sorry, not a new province itself. Be that as it may, the area is still an environmental disaster-zone.
oops...I didn't see Bubba's reply above. Thanks for that.

Apparently she did spent a great deal of time in Vancouver,owning property there et.. but perhaps her later years were spent in Thailand.

Edited April 30, 2019 by HaleySabai

[vivid]

I read from another thread that the end of N Thailand's burning ban is today. 

 

They trying to start new fires?  Chiang Rai seems to be deteriorating as well.

 

[vivid]

CMAQHI

 

Ban Chan, Kalyani Vadhana taking the lead

 

[vivid]

18 hours ago, HaleySabai said:

The Wat Chan area is not part of Chiang Mai province. It became a new provincial realm,named after Princess Galyani Vadhana who lived in Vancouver,Canada and passed away a few years back.

 

6 hours ago, HaleySabai said:

Wat Chan was renamed after the Princess as a new district in ChiangMai province. Sorry, not a new province itself. Be that as it may, the area is still an environmental disaster-zone.
oops...I didn't see Bubba's reply above. Thanks for that.

Apparently she did spent a great deal of time in Vancouver,owning property there et.. but perhaps her later years were spent in Thailand.

 

 

Yeah, thanks for the info. Well.....seriously i am not really privy to the history and all that as im not in Thailand, just following what google / Chiang Mai Air quality sites like cmaqhi / CMU Dustboy are showing.

 

 

 

Anyway.......the 24-hr PM concentration figures for Wat Chan and Mae Taeng are pretty high.

 

Edited April 30, 2019 by vivid

[HaleySabai]

Vivid you have been a great source of play by play information during this environmental shit-show - Appreciate your input!! ????

[orang37]

18 minutes ago, HaleySabai said:

Vivid you have been a great source of play by play information 

I'd like to levitate my hand, and join in ... thanks, Khun Vivid, for your very high-quality posts, data, analyses !

 

~o:37;

[vivid]

No problem dudes.......nothing to it really, just copy n paste.  ????

 

All this screenshots/data might seem a bit trivial or only useful for the current situation.

But believe me, all these screenshots might come into handy in later years when someone asks for a reference if year 202x is worse than before or is it longer in duration etc.   In this "2019" thread i actually had dug in past threads (eg the 2015 one, pretty bad year) to find previous years' data.

 

Seriously, i have never seen anything like this before, such high levels late into the season....though the smoke exactly is not widespread and detected by a lot of stations like in March. But still......

In the 2015 thread, i more or less have already stopped posting air quality screenshots by the beginning of April.  ????????

 

[canopy]

Zoom out from these pictures and look around. You will notice Bangkok and other parts of Thailand have green/yellow zone air. And the air in China even looks better. What could be more depressing?

 

[piewarmer]

the only way to fix this problem is photoshop

[vivid]

What the........

 

[at15]

health promoting hospital ????????????

[markcm19]

February - June: The New Burning Season?

Edited May 2, 2019 by markcm19

[Samuel Smith]

56 minutes ago, markcm19 said:

February - June: The New Burning Season?

That's the pollution season, burning season starts October

[at15]

14 hours ago, markcm19 said:

February - June: The New Burning Season?

every month of the year there is burning no exception. i would say its significant Dec - May

[Sambotte]

Insane...

 

And they will do nothing unless money from tourism drop significantly.

Ho wait no they put commission in place, and talk about thinking on how to follow the END OF THE BURNING BAN, witch is UNBELIEVABLE !

Or they ban cigarettes smoking, yeah, more easy. When i see a songthaw smoking i wonder ho many time more pollution just one makes : like 100 time more smoke ? 1000 times ?!

 

So no, until money drop, they can not :

- Control the songthaw and the fabulous fk. tuk-tuk, witch represent a huge pollution in Chiang Mai town ! Easy to do but nobody think about it obviously. And then the diesel cars. VERY EASY TO DO : put control in traffic, size vehicules, period !

- Stop the Fk. farmer burning, by law and harsh punishment (the one they prefer to make against the farang), enforce it, make example, send army <deleted> !

- Make the mushroom think illegal and harsh punishment.

- And then, more difficult but Singapore did that with smoke issue from Indonesia : diplomacy to stop Myanmar and Laos (other primitives countries) from burning like pledge too.

- And of course i forget the obvious : learn ho to deal with farming waste and land farming.

 

But they actually DO almost NOTHING ! Are in denial mode, complaining about the heat. For years ! And even now it's worldwide known.

Well, they will finally do something because of tourism and image (face) impact, but i guess they will do the minimum.

 

Sorry this (and environemental issue generally in this crazy world) piss me off.

 

[canopy]

Yes there are easy solutions. The problem is no one wants them.

 

There was a recent news story that all this smoke is preventing clouds from forming. Where there are no clouds there is no rain and thus no cleaning of the air and no cooling off. It is projected this year might be the hottest year in the history of Thailand. Hotter, dryer times lie ahead which we know are the precise conditions that encourage even more burning. A vicious downward cycle of more pollution, hotter days, and dryer times is quite possible. So now not only is that farmer/arsonist filling your lungs with gunk he is also making your day hotter and taking away your rain. Yet you guessed it, nobody cares. Just go on with life and do nothing.

 

[Bassosa]

On 5/3/2019 at 7:56 AM, Sambotte said:

Insane...

 

And they will do nothing unless money from tourism drop significantly.

Ho wait no they put commission in place, and talk about thinking on how to follow the END OF THE BURNING BAN, witch is UNBELIEVABLE !

Or they ban cigarettes smoking, yeah, more easy. When i see a songthaw smoking i wonder ho many time more pollution just one makes : like 100 time more smoke ? 1000 times ?!

 

So no, until money drop, they can not :

- Control the songthaw and the fabulous fk. tuk-tuk, witch represent a huge pollution in Chiang Mai town ! Easy to do but nobody think about it obviously. And then the diesel cars. VERY EASY TO DO : put control in traffic, size vehicules, period !

- Stop the Fk. farmer burning, by law and harsh punishment (the one they prefer to make against the farang), enforce it, make example, send army <deleted> !

- Make the mushroom think illegal and harsh punishment.

- And then, more difficult but Singapore did that with smoke issue from Indonesia : diplomacy to stop Myanmar and Laos (other primitives countries) from burning like pledge too.

- And of course i forget the obvious : learn ho to deal with farming waste and land farming.

 

But they actually DO almost NOTHING ! Are in denial mode, complaining about the heat. For years ! And even now it's worldwide known.

Well, they will finally do something because of tourism and image (face) impact, but i guess they will do the minimum.

 

Sorry this (and environemental issue generally in this crazy world) piss me off.

 

The Songthaews & tuktuks are an indication on how seriously the people in charge take the pollution problem. They really don't care!

Instead they purchase these water demistyfiers. They don't help at all but at least there's a big fat backhander on the purchase, for the lucky few that is.

[Bassosa]

I mean, how difficult is to hold public transport to some sort of emission standard?

 

It can't be that hard?

 

Give them a few years to prepare and then have obligatory yearly checks. Fail the emission test and you're not allowed to operate.

 

It'll make a huge difference to air quality, not just in smokey season, but always. Chiang Mai is getting filthier and filthier. Tourists will give up on it, especially inner city areas. Just a matter of time imho.

 

Edited May 4, 2019 by Bassosa

[vivid]

Just came across this good documentary about Air pollution in Mongolia.......  

Dying to breathe: Mongolia's polluted air | Unreported World

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUNuHxrd7Y0

 

[vivid]

Mae Taeng hospital, over a week now.

 

[mike787]

On 3/15/2019 at 4:25 PM, orang37 said:

 

Then, why do I feel sick, and sluggish, not hyper ? Am I not inhaling deeply enough ?

 

o:37;

need to change from snorting sugar to high grade coke from Cambodia????

[canopy]

22 hours ago, Bassosa said:

Fail the emission test and you're not allowed to operate...It'll make a huge difference to air quality

Thailand already has emissions tests. Once a car becomes 8 years old you have to pass an emissions test every year before you can renew the registration. Note the air gets as bad or worse no matter how far you go from the cities during the bad times. Thus, the main problem is not vehicle emissions and focusing on this alone will have little impact on the bad times of year. There are much bigger pollution sources that must be eliminated. But it's all a pipe dream because no one cares to do anything about it. No reason to expect change in our lifetime even if you know solutions that will work.