Mae Sai residents to hold urgent meeting Monday over intolerable air pollution

[webfact]

 

People in Mae Sai district of Thailand’s northern province of Chiang Rai are to meet tomorrow to discuss the PM2.5 pollution problem, which has risen to seven times the safety limit.

 

Many residents say the sky has turned orange and visibility has reduced so much that they can no longer see the towering Tham Luang mountains. A number of motorcycle taxi drivers complain that they are suffocating and their eyes are constantly watering.

 

One netizen said in his Facebook post there are ten air purifiers in his house, but they still cannot cope with level of dust in the air.

 

Full story: https://www.thaipbsworld.com/mae-sai-residents-to-hold-urgent-meeting-monday-over-intolerable-air-pollution/

 

-- © Copyright Thai PBS 2023-03-27

 

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[hotchilli]

4 hours ago, webfact said:

People in Mae Sai district of Thailand’s northern province of Chiang Rai are to meet tomorrow to discuss the PM2.5 pollution problem, which has risen to seven times the safety limit.

Sack the governor.

[RandiRona]

5 hours ago, webfact said:

Chiang Rai are to meet tomorrow to discuss the PM2.5

Absolutely , you can repel pollution by a brainy discussion. 

How about creating and following some rules related to stuble burning?? You think that would help or waste of time?

[JoePai]

Unfortunately it is mostly the surrounding countries i.e. Laos & Burma, causing most of the fires/pollution

[SoilSpoil]

1 minute ago, JoePai said:

Unfortunately it is mostly the surrounding countries i.e. Laos & Burma, causing most of the fires/pollution

Nasa firemaps also show a lot of fires within CR province, so unjust to blame Laos and Myanmar.

[tomazbodner]

6 hours ago, webfact said:

One netizen said in his Facebook post there are ten air purifiers in his house, but they still cannot cope with level of dust in the air.

Close the windows. Get a real air purifier.

[Tarteso]

Looks crazy levels today.????

[realfunster]

39 minutes ago, JoePai said:

Unfortunately it is mostly the surrounding countries i.e. Laos & Burma, causing most of the fires/pollution

There is some truth to this but on another thread, I showed that there were some timing differences between the "burning season" in Thailand and surrounding countries. I noted Thai officials being relatively happy in March to refer to these NASA heat maps and conveniently not doing so in February when the majority of the Thai burning was going on. 

 

My feeling is that there is certainly much that can be done in Thailand and shrugging the shoulders and blaming the neighbours is a cop out. And indeed, if one of the solutions is to propose reducing/stopping burning to the neighbours, you don't have much credibility if you are doing it yourselves, do you ?

 

Below are heat maps from 14/2, 28/2 and 27/3. 

[patman30]

1 hour ago, JoePai said:

Unfortunately it is mostly the surrounding countries i.e. Laos & Burma, causing most of the fires/pollution

do you live in a city?
fires everyday where i am still
was horrendous through February, not so bad now

Edited March 27, 2023 by patman30

[MrJ2U]

Bad air is not a new phenomenon in Thailand or Southeast Asia for that matter.

 

 

[Purdey]

It looks like the government doesn't care about citizens, let alone the tourists that they so desperately need. Not everyone wants go to Phuket only. 

[mommysboy]

It may be the worst but most of the north seems to be at hazardous levels. Absolute madness. It gets worse. Typical of this country to be going in the opposite direction to most of the rest of the world.

[Jai Dee]

7 hours ago, realfunster said:

There is some truth to this but on another thread, I showed that there were some timing differences between the "burning season" in Thailand and surrounding countries. I noted Thai officials being relatively happy in March to refer to these NASA heat maps and conveniently not doing so in February when the majority of the Thai burning was going on. 

 

My feeling is that there is certainly much that can be done in Thailand and shrugging the shoulders and blaming the neighbours is a cop out. And indeed, if one of the solutions is to propose reducing/stopping burning to the neighbours, you don't have much credibility if you are doing it yourselves, do you ?

 

Below are heat maps from 14/2, 28/2 and 27/3. 

Not fair to blame Thailand's neighbours at all... the wind direction at this time of year is predominantly from the South-West, so CR residents should be blaming the rest of Thailand, not the neighbouring countries.

 

Windy is also a good source of information:

 

https://www.windy.com/-PM2-5-pm2p5?cams,pm2p5,18.625,100.876,7

[trainman34014]

13 hours ago, JoePai said:

Unfortunately it is mostly the surrounding countries i.e. Laos & Burma, causing most of the fires/pollution

Presume you work for the Thai Government then ?   It is their stock answer every year !

[simon43]

If you look at the fire map on a global basis, the picture is really shocking.  Look at south-east Asia and compare it to the rest of the world (sorry, missed off west coast NA but not many fires there).

 

[Captor]

On 3/27/2023 at 3:06 AM, JoePai said:

Unfortunately it is mostly the surrounding countries i.e. Laos & Burma, causing most of the fires/pollution

So then better not doing anything?

[Captor]

This will all be forgotten in 3 weeks time.

[Northstar1]

Living the dream in Thailand!????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

[motdaeng]

On 3/27/2023 at 5:36 PM, Jai Dee said:

Windy is also a good source of information:

 

https://www.windy.com/-PM2-5-pm2p5?cams,pm2p5,18.625,100.876,7

this windy website seems completely unreliable for pm 2.5 µg/m3 ...

 

now friday morning in chiang rai:

windy.com : 83 µg/m3

aqicn.org : 344 µg/m3

[nigelforbes]

On 3/27/2023 at 5:36 PM, Jai Dee said:

Not fair to blame Thailand's neighbours at all... the wind direction at this time of year is predominantly from the South-West, so CR residents should be blaming the rest of Thailand, not the neighbouring countries.

 

Windy is also a good source of information:

 

https://www.windy.com/-PM2-5-pm2p5?cams,pm2p5,18.625,100.876,7

A major problem at this time of year is that the air in the North is static, there is very little wind to speak of. That said, the wind currents at Tachileik are from the West, from Myanmar, as the Wind map shows, but are only very slight.

 

https://www.windy.com/?19.605,99.355,8