Air Quality

[Bananaman]

Good for you. Maybe you should get together with UG, Priceless, Winnie the Kwai and all the other naysayers and have yourself a jolly little smog-free party, while those folk seriously concerned by this issue take what steps are necessary to protect themselves and their families from its harmful effects.

ie: Whinge about it on Thai Visa!

(Sorry, I could not resist)

"Flippancy, the most hopeless form of intellectual vice . . .” George Gissing

[el jefe]

I think we all agree that the air is positively grotty at the moment, and has been so for the last two weeks. However, for the sake of precision, the air pollution level at the Chiang Mai measuring station has only exceeded the government-defined level (120 µg/m3) on one day so far this year (2 March). The last time before that was on 19 March 2007.

Let's keep our fingers crossed that we are not heading into a March like the one of 2007

/ Priceless

Priceless, generally I agree with you and your use of quantifiable statistics, but I have to disagree with what you wrote above.

If you go to the PCD site and graph "Chiang Mai" the PM10 level was above 120 on the following dates:

20 Feb

26 Feb

1 March

2 March

4 March

5 March

6 March

19, 21, and 22 Feb seem to be lost.

27 and 28 Feb were just under the 120 limit at 118 and 116.

The reported figures for Uparaj in the city are far worse.

Priceless, you'll lose your credibility by reporting erroneous stats.

inmo, this appears to be reaching 2007 levels.

My sincere apologies for my typo (omission)! If you look at the previous post, I was replying to a poster claiming "The pollution has been breaching government-defined acceptable levels by 50% on many days.". That is what I was commenting on but didn't make sufficiently clear (except in my quoting the previous poster).

You're quite right in that the pollution level at the Chiang Mai measuring station has been above the stipulated maximum on seven days so far this year, and on three separate occasions last year.

The levels at Uparaj have been more than 50% over the limit twice this year and above the 120 µg/m3 limit on ten occasions.

In the above terms, this year is already worse than last year (which, however, was the best one this decade).

Again, my apologies for leaving out the all-important "50%".

/ Priceless

Thanks for the clarification, Priceless. I still appreciate the verifiable, quantifiable info even tho the air sucks now and is getting worse.

[bkkbill]

Priceless, and all the other posters that have spent time researching and commenting on the important subject I would like to thank you for your input. I am a this time living in Bangkok with the intention of moving to Chiang Mai in the not too distance future. My wife has been concerned with the pollution. We do have two homes here and plan to keep one if only for a trip in March for obvious pollution reasons and of course family visits. Carbon foot print be dammed. Does anyone think something north maybe around Mae Taeng might be a good move. We are not really interested in being in the city.

[el jefe]

The air quality won't be any better in Mae Taeng. It's in the same valley as CM. And other northern cities are even worse. Chiang Rai usually has higher PM10 than CM from Feb-April. And Mae Hong Son currently has the worst air in the kingdom.

Priceless, and all the other posters that have spent time researching and commenting on the important subject I would like to thank you for your input. I am a this time living in Bangkok with the intention of moving to Chiang Mai in the not too distance future. My wife has been concerned with the pollution. We do have two homes here and plan to keep one if only for a trip in March for obvious pollution reasons and of course family visits. Carbon foot print be dammed. Does anyone think something north maybe around Mae Taeng might be a good move. We are not really interested in being in the city.

[Priceless]

Priceless, and all the other posters that have spent time researching and commenting on the important subject I would like to thank you for your input. I am a this time living in Bangkok with the intention of moving to Chiang Mai in the not too distance future. My wife has been concerned with the pollution. We do have two homes here and plan to keep one if only for a trip in March for obvious pollution reasons and of course family visits. Carbon foot print be dammed. Does anyone think something north maybe around Mae Taeng might be a good move. We are not really interested in being in the city.

Thank you for the appreciative words Unfortunately, there isn't much of substance that one can say about any possible difference in air pollution between Chiang Mai and Mae Taeng. It appears intuitively logical that the air quality would improve with increasing distance from the city center. This also seems to correlate with the somewhat higher levels at Uparaj College (roadside downtown) versus the "Chiang Mai" measuring station (at City Hall, almost 6 km NNW of Uparaj). Unfortunately these are the only two measuring stations that we have (excluding "Chiangmai", which is a mobile station used at varying locations). Anecdotal information seems to indicate that the air quality actually does improve significantly with increasing distance from the city, but there is no proof of this.

However it appears that air pollution, like the weather, is subject to "microclimate", i.e. that there can be rather large systematic variations between different locations in spite of them being rather close to each other. Consequently I would not be willing to promise anything about Mae Taeng or any other outlying location.

Eventually it will be very interesting to look at the figures for Chiang Rai, Mae Hong Son, Lamphun, Phayao and so on. Unfortunately, measurements at these places have started so recently (none of them has a full year of data yet) that it is very difficult to draw any conclusions from what is available.

Best of luck with your upcoming move and very welcome to Chiang Mai

/ Priceless

[yumidesign]

if you can ovoid it do not come near chiang mai till the rains start

i think it is actually worst than '07

we have been holed up indoors for weeks feeling like caged animals

check out http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHa...ew.php?id=37343

ps the air in the night bazar is the same as anywhere else in the area but at night it is just not so obvious

Edited April 5, 2009 by yumidesign