Chiang Mai Chokes From Burning Farms

[hardy1943]

Actually I was wondering this morning cycling through Chiang Mai city centre whether there shouldn't be an equivalent effort at this time of year to reduce factory and vehicle emissions - surely they make a big contribution to the problem too?

come to Nan, number one tourist destination for Thai people last year, and see the lack of industry and traffic.

90% of this crud in the air is from farmers.

you can smell it, taste it, no matter what time of day or night.

thank god my family and I are shortly off to europe for a month. It seems much worse than last year. I pity everyone who has to live through this because of farmers who have the same intellect as a _____(insert noun of choice)

Where you trying to say as THE BOYS IN BKK???

Edited March 17, 2010 by hardy1943

[webfact]

AIR POLLUTION

Flights to Mae Hong Son cancelled due to thick smog

By The Nation

MAE HONG SON: -- The smog situation in Mae Hong Son remains critical, prompting Nok Air to suspend three daily flights for three days in a row, and tourists to give the North a miss.

Mae Hong Son Chamber of Commerce chairman Supoj Klinpraneed said flight cancellations greatly affected the province as tourists, fearing the smog and the long journey by car, chose to visit other places.

Mae Hong Son detected Wednesday fine particle matter smaller than 10 microns (PM10) at 437.8 mgs per cubic metre, way beyond the PM10 standard of no more than 120mgs per cubic metre, while the Air Quality Index (AQI)- normally less than 100 - soared to 320.

Chiang Mai has been smog shrouded for a week now, with the air quality station at City Hall reporting the PM10 at 268.4mgs per cubic metre and AQI value of 265.

-- The Nation 2010-03-17

[newsfooter][/newsfooter]

[ThailandTommy]

It's not just rice fields that they are burning it's months of rubbish that has been dumped, I don't think you can blame the people 100% the resposibilty must lie with the local authority who should collect their rubbish!

The place is a disgrace everytime I go out my eyes actually sting from the smoke. You can't expect anything else from a third world country.

[Briggsy]

Check those lung disease rates including lung cancer if you can get hold of accurate stats. Talk to Thai MoPH officials off the record.

[ChiangMaiFun]

Kruumaiyai,

Indeed, the vehicle emissions should be tested annually. There's a "crackdown" every now and then in Bangkok where the "Highway" Police (Boys in Lt. Brown or tan and not the BIB...) get out the exhaust test equipment and actually pull buses and other ill-maintained vehicles off the streets. Be nice to see that in CM!

That's right - sitting next to a Thai today and a motorbike full of grey fumes rode down the road - I moaned but she was unperturbed - now THAT is the problem!

[srisatch]

Another word for swidden is: Assarting......the ramifications are countless....no comment?...

Funny.... imtranslator cannot manage either swidden or assarting!

No more to say.........anyway cannot speak as life in Doi Saket is PRESENTLY carried out with wet face masks! Decent articles on slash and burn on wiki....keep breathing........

[BlueSmurf]

http://www.pcd.go.th/AirQuality/Regional/Default.cfm

Have a look at the facts..Click or paste the link above...Its time to go south I think...As for the burning Thais have no interest in stopping slash and burn..Last year I asked people burning the leaves out side my house "did they not love their children"Why burn when you can rot them down for fertilizer? Answer "we have no where to put the leaves"..10 metres away is waste land or should I say land owned by the people who employ these gardeners! The land has never been used to do anything for 20 years. As usual the sub culture is not the same as the Thai culture we are led to believe exists here.....

[scotbeve]

CMfun,

Lack of maintenance on most vehicles in Thailand as well as monitoring instruments (including the testing and calibration of said equipment) is also big cause of some of this man-borne pollution.

[femi fan]

Thailand is one of the rice bowls of the world. Could the burning be somehow connected to this fact?

It's really no use simply complaining. I get tired of it every year. Where are the questions? Why do they do it? Does it actually help the land in some way? I know my brother-in-law in australia says that bush fires regenerate the soil.

I also know that farming practices in europe and the US may not produce all this haze, but they certainly deplete the soil from the full range of nutrients in which food grows. So perhaps you either eat healthy food and have a haze for up to two months, or you eat nutrient-deficient all year and have no haze. Take your pick!

I would like it to go away, not be here, yes, i live here. Visibility is down to a depressing one km at most. It won't improve until we get rain, which will be at least two weeks away. But maybe it's a price we have to pay, for those of us who choose to live in chiang mai, a place which for 10 months of the year is one fantastic place to inhabit in this world of ours.

Income from farming up here must surely hugely exceed that from tourism and whinging farangs! We get good food in chiang mai, all local produce, and very tasty too. I have to assume this is partly as a result of the burning that goes on. Local people know best about local conditions, surely?

[femi fan]

It's not just rice fields that they are burning it's months of rubbish that has been dumped, I don't think you can blame the people 100% the resposibilty must lie with the local authority who should collect their rubbish!

The place is a disgrace everytime I go out my eyes actually sting from the smoke. You can't expect anything else from a third world country.

Could i expect you to choose to not be living in a third world country which appears to disdain you? How come you have decided to live in a third world country if it's so bad?

I live here, and my eyes don't sting, and i don't feel any different to normal. I know some do suffer, but we don't seem to hear too much from those who don't get any reactions to this rather disquieting haze.

How can you decide a place so easily to be a 'disgrace'? And, why live in that disgrace?

[femi fan]

It's not just rice fields that they are burning it's months of rubbish that has been dumped, I don't think you can blame the people 100% the resposibilty must lie with the local authority who should collect their rubbish!

But i agree with this. Well, i don't know about months, just that i do see rubbish in black plastic bags being burned, although not too often i think. I have long said that one meaningful way local councillors can act is to provide full and proper waste disposal systems. That includes lots of local dumps, like in england, where you can take anything to be disposed of, and often recycled. But the key thing is that the choice is available, and because of that citizens use it. With the number of pick-up trucks in chiang mai, i'm sure chiang mai people would be happy to take their rubbish to such dumps. Government must provide help, but it does not do so.

Chiang Mai makes a lot of money from three major sources: food, handicrafts and furniture, tourism. There should be a lot of money available to set up a proper waste disposal system for the citizens. The place deserves it, but when will the local politicians find the required motivation to carry through such a project?

And they could also provide bridges between locals who burn, and city-dwellers who don't want them to burn. Understanding helps such bridges. I'd certainly like to know why farmers do their burning, in their own words.

[Fore Man]

We live just north of the city and visibility hasn't been this bad in the 5+ years we've been here. My wife complained of burning eyes for the first time ever this past week and she is from the Thai north where annual burning is the normal practice. We were out driving today and passed through the intersection of Mae Jo Road and Highway 121. Off to the SW side of that major intersection, authorities were burning down brush over roughly a 3-rai area. I use the term 'authorities' because there were several fire trucks and uniformed officials to be seen. I thought that setting brush fires was illegal but yet it is obviously condoned...even during the worst air quality period we have observed in a long time. Shame on Chiang Mai provincial officials for not initiating a prolonged, multi-faceted and deliberate campaign to reduce this major health and safety concern. Maybe it will take a plane crash at the airport to wake these idiots up.

[apetley]

It's not just rice fields that they are burning it's months of rubbish that has been dumped, I don't think you can blame the people 100% the resposibilty must lie with the local authority who should collect their rubbish!

The place is a disgrace everytime I go out my eyes actually sting from the smoke. You can't expect anything else from a third world country.

Could i expect you to choose to not be living in a third world country which appears to disdain you? How come you have decided to live in a third world country if it's so bad?

I live here, and my eyes don't sting, and i don't feel any different to normal. I know some do suffer, but we don't seem to hear too much from those who don't get any reactions to this rather disquieting haze.

How can you decide a place so easily to be a 'disgrace'? And, why live in that disgrace?

Instead of a tired "if you don't like it go home" style answer why don't you offer some alternative for the hundreds of thousands of Thais who suffer from increased instance of lung cancer, respiratory ailments etc.

Their own government recognise the problem but seem unable or unwilling to implement any remedy, that is the tragedy here.

[anselpixel]

I arrived in CM on January 8, and it was everything I'd hoped it would be. The trip was part of my search for a good retirement home outside the US. Within a month, I had developed reactive airway problems severe enough to require oral steroids and decongestants. I left for a couple of weeks, and went south to the beach, where I made a pretty rapid recovery. I roughed it on the way down and took Nakonchonair's overnight bus. Far into the night, I could see entire mountainsides burning.

Back to CM by air at the end of February. Really poor visibility at the airport, but things looked okay in town. Symptoms all returned within three days. Flying out, I could hardly see the ground by the time we reached a thousand feet.

People can throw around numbers all they want: Chiang Mai and all of Northern Thailand have a serious air quality problem. I'm now looking elsewhere for a permanent retirement base, and hope to be able to visit Thailand during the times when it's not unhealthy for me to do so.

It's a big disappointment. I loved the city.

[ChiangMaiFun]

I arrived in CM on January 8, and it was everything I'd hoped it would be. The trip was part of my search for a good retirement home outside the US. Within a month, I had developed reactive airway problems severe enough to require oral steroids and decongestants. I left for a couple of weeks, and went south to the beach, where I made a pretty rapid recovery. I roughed it on the way down and took Nakonchonair's overnight bus. Far into the night, I could see entire mountainsides burning.

Back to CM by air at the end of February. Really poor visibility at the airport, but things looked okay in town. Symptoms all returned within three days. Flying out, I could hardly see the ground by the time we reached a thousand feet.

People can throw around numbers all they want: Chiang Mai and all of Northern Thailand have a serious air quality problem. I'm now looking elsewhere for a permanent retirement base, and hope to be able to visit Thailand during the times when it's not unhealthy for me to do so.

It's a big disappointment. I loved the city.

This is depressing but understandable - often the Thais can't wait to shoot themselves in the foot - the pollution is horrible but no one complains - this is the problem - Thais are raised to be subservient.

[skybluestu]

I've been checking the figures at the link below for a few weeks now and it's usually a lot worse here in Chiang Rai and in Lamphun, Lampang, Phayao than it is in Chiang Mai, but it only makes the news when Chiang Mai gets bad! It should be a beautiful time of the year with blue skies and sunshine but for the last couple of weeks it's been like a nuclear winter.

It's only for 4-6 weeks per year and the rest of the year the north has beautiful weather, often with cool/cold nights and mornings and doesn't suffer from constant humidity like many other places in Thailand but I still wish more would be done about it. And lets not forget that a lot of burning goes on just over the border in Burma & Laos.

http://www.pcd.go.th/AirQuality/Regional/default.cfm

[ianf]

Chiang Mai is indeed choking. I cycle some 80km everyday but now it is almostr impossible. Yesterday my eyes were burning and sore - the Ratachet hospital appeared to have a number of people complaining about chests, swollen eyes and so on. Meanwhile, I watched two events:

1. On the Canal Road towards SanPaTong = a 'teacher' supervising kids burning the grass on the verge outside their school. Unbelievable.

2. Some local villagers, with red shirts and red flags burning a 'copse' and a field - sorry I thought these guys were fighting for democracy! Is it truly democratic to burn and pollute, creating health problems for all concerned? I think not.

Finally, the government may act, but how can they influence the same events that go on in Burma across the border. Therin lies the rub.

[ChiangMaiFun]

I've been checking the figures at the link below for a few weeks now and it's usually a lot worse here in Chiang Rai and in Lamphun, Lampang, Phayao than it is in Chiang Mai, but it only makes the news when Chiang Mai gets bad! It should be a beautiful time of the year with blue skies and sunshine but for the last couple of weeks it's been like a nuclear winter.

It's only for 4-6 weeks per year and the rest of the year the north has beautiful weather, often with cool/cold nights and mornings and doesn't suffer from constant humidity like many other places in Thailand but I still wish more would be done about it. And lets not forget that a lot of burning goes on just over the border in Burma & Laos.

http://www.pcd.go.th/AirQuality/Regional/default.cfm

But its heartbreaking not just for us humans but for wildlife and trees etc. and they do NOTHING - I talk to friends about it... 'what can we do?' they say... they are trained to 'accept' from a young age - this is ther root problem and one which we cannot fix. Unless some powerful person gets pissed off with it and acts nothing will be done.

[jackr]

If you don't need to come this way for a few weeks then I would recommend that you don't.

Same this morning.

I agree that simply ordering farmers & villagers to stop burning & threatening them with fines will not work. They don't burn for fun, they have good reasons to burn connected directly to their livelihood. Some of these reasons are listed above and there are more, such as clearing corn stubble and roadside brush. Until someone (the gov't?) provides the locals with an alternative means of meeting their real needs, the burning will continue no matter what the laws are.

The only reason these people are burning is because they are <deleted> lazy. That it may be good for the next crop is part of the point, but even if it weren't they'd still burn because they are lazy. What it needs is huge fines and imprisonment followed by education on other ways to remove vegetation. I don't give a shit about the welfare of these people and their traditional ways and nor does anyone else. They're screwing their kids' health up as much as mine. The only way is to get hard and drum it into them.

[scotbeve]

I've been checking the figures at the link below for a few weeks now and it's usually a lot worse here in Chiang Rai and in Lamphun, Lampang, Phayao than it is in Chiang Mai, but it only makes the news when Chiang Mai gets bad! It should be a beautiful time of the year with blue skies and sunshine but for the last couple of weeks it's been like a nuclear winter.

It's only for 4-6 weeks per year and the rest of the year the north has beautiful weather, often with cool/cold nights and mornings and doesn't suffer from constant humidity like many other places in Thailand but I still wish more would be done about it. And lets not forget that a lot of burning goes on just over the border in Burma & Laos.

http://www.pcd.go.th/AirQuality/Regional/default.cfm

November to December are absolutely awesome here in CM!!

Rules, laws, enforcement of the rules and laws, and education are lacking here for the pollution problems. It was definitely NOT this bad 25 years ago!!!!

[skybluestu]

Nov-Jan is my favourite time of year too, it's so nice to have to wear a jacket, hat and gloves! Actually the only time of year I don't like is the 4-6 weeks starting from about mid Feb and that is only because of the smoke.

[hmficc]

Wife and I came to Mexico this year to wait it out. Air here is crystal clear. I have NEVER seen anything like it in CM at any time. Time for a change????

[scotbeve]

Wife and I came to Mexico this year to wait it out. Air here is crystal clear. I have NEVER seen anything like it in CM at any time. Time for a change????

I'm sorry... forgive my question, but where exactly are you at present? In CM? and, a.) you've never seen the air quality this bad or b.) you're in Mexico and the air there is very nice ???

[ThailandLovr]

The solution, although based on a lie, is for the Health Ministry to declare smoke from burning causes a H1N1-similar lung disease, and watch the scurrying for other solutions. All of a sudden the burning would stop, everybody would be doing something else. Personally I see financial incentive based replowing or grinding as possibilities.

[chiang mai]

The solution, although based on a lie, is for the Health Ministry to declare smoke from burning causes a H1N1-similar lung disease, and watch the scurrying for other solutions. All of a sudden the burning would stop, everybody would be doing something else. Personally I see financial incentive based replowing or grinding as possibilities.

What makes you think that they can control H1N1 any better than they can the current pollution problem, that's what really scares me is that there seems to be a total disregard for life and a serious carelessness/care not attitude about these things.

[ThailandLovr]

Did I suggest anything about controlling H1N1?

My point was Thais were/are scared sh!tless over the possibility of catching it. School closings, mask wearings, etc, etc.

I thought maybe if they also took seriously the .... Oh, never mind. Just a tongue-in-cheek post I made.

Edited March 18, 2010 by ThailandLovr

[webfact]

REGIONAL FIRES

Smoke from fields affecting Bangkok

By The Nation

In North, all districts in Mae Hong Son declared disaster

BANGKOK: -- Fog blanketed some parts of Bangkok yesterday morning partly owing to the fires being lit by farmers in other provinces in Central Thailand.

"The visibility is not good in Don Mueang, Din Daeng and Phaholyothin," the Meteorological Department's deputy director general Somchai Baimuang said.

The amount of small dust particles in Bangkok's Din Daeng area reached 121.4 micrograms per cubic metre of air yesterday. For the health of residents, dust particles should not go beyond 120 mcg per cubic metre of air.

So far, Somchai said, the pollution would ease in Bangkok pretty soon after the cold air mass from China, which is hovering over Thailand, loses its strength.

Meanwhile, Mae Hong Son Governor Kamthorn Thawornsathit said the smog problems prompted him to declare all districts in his province as disaster zones.

The smog density in the province exceeded a level described as "dangerous", he said, citing a study that attributed the density to the current high pressure and the local panlike landscape, that makes smog stay low and linger.

"The dry and hot climate with virtually no ventilation, coupled with manmade fires just before farming seasons, all attribute to the high density," he added.

The smog density in Mae Hong Son and the rest of the North has increased way beyond a critical level with local residents advised not to exercise and to stay indoors to avoid respiratory problems.

Up to 12,914 residents in Mae Hong Song have already sought treatment due to symptoms related to the smog.

So far, 40,000 facemasks have been prepared for distribution among local residents and flights to and from Mae Hong Son have been suspended for three days, Kamthorn said.

This has resulted in local tourism being affected, as the mountainous province is highly dependent on local and foreign travellers.

Wildfires, the main source of the smog, have been reported 46 times, already destroying 163 rai of forests this year, compared to 159 incidents which saw 536 rai of forests destroyed in all of 2009. Local forestry offices in the North are instructed to encourage farmers not to burn old crops.

A meeting of local administration officials and the Pollution Control Department is being held today in Mae Hong Son to discuss health problems and immediate solutions for local residents.

A health advisory released yesterday called on local residents to reduce exercising to limit the inhalation of toxic air heavy with particulate matter.

-- The Nation 2010-03-19

[newsfooter][/newsfooter]

[canopy]

BANGKOK: -- Fog blanketed some parts of Bangkok yesterday morning partly owing to the fires being lit by farmers

Fog, an interesting word choice to describe smoke.

Wildfires, the main source of the smog

Wildfires, another interesting word choice to describe fires intentionally set like clock work every single year.

A meeting of local administration officials and the Pollution Control Department is being held today in Mae Hong Son to discuss health problems and immediate solutions for local residents.

So I guess this means the practice will continue to be accepted and nothing is going to change in the future.

The smog density in Mae Hong Son and the rest of the North has increased way beyond a critical level with local residents advised not to exercise and to stay indoors to avoid respiratory problems.

What's next, evacuation? I have never, ever heard of such hazardous air as Mae Hong Song is getting right now. The air quality index is 400 an a scale of 1-100. Unbelievable. Look at this reading:

[canopy]

One more footnote on what Thailand's air quality index (AQI) means from the above chart:

0-50 Healthy

50+ Moderate Quality

100+ Affects health

200+ Significant health impact

300+ Dangerous

400+ OFF THE SCALE

Folks, 400 is being exceeded as we speak.

[Thai at Heart]

REGIONAL FIRES

Smoke from fields affecting Bangkok

By The Nation

In North, all districts in Mae Hong Son declared disaster

Meanwhile, Mae Hong Son Governor Kamthorn Thawornsathit said the smog problems prompted him to declare all districts in his province as disaster zones.

-- The Nation 2010-03-19

[newsfooter][/newsfooter]

Which means if I am not wrong he can request funds from the government to do what??????

What is this governer who is sitting in his air conditioned office going to do about the situation? The North of Thailand's reputation as a tourism destination is being ruined. Songkran is only a few weeks away virtually the entirety of the North is blanketed in smoke.

Do something! Declaring and emergency and retiring to your office isn't going to solve this.