Smoke, Smog, Dust 2012 Chiang Mai

[Priceless]

I think you may have missed this post:

And you, Winnie, might have missed the fact that this list is selective. It shows mostly countries with higher limits and omits countries that have adopted the 50 μg/m3 limit to create the impression that the 50 μg/m3 limit is exceptional, which is clearly not the case.

Besides, my question is about the rationale behind the 120 μg/m3 limit, and not about which countries are doing better/worse. The list seems to communicate "oh well, things are worse in Cameroon", but this is hardly a justification.

P.S.: Besides, as Priceless pointed out, the limits of various countries are applied differently, so they cannot be compared easily.

Cheers, CMExpat

The EU limit is excluded from my list because it is not a 24-hour average limit, but rather a limit on the 10^th percentile, i.e. the 36^th highest value of the year (with, I reiterate, no limit on how high the 35 higher values may be). I would appreciate if you specified in which other ways the list is ''selective'.

/ Priceless

[Tywais]

I will drop this off the pinned topic list after Sohng Krang as it appears we are reasonably well out of the season, thankfully. 48,000 views - a bit unexpected! I would like to thank everyone for their participation in this, surprisingly popular, topic. Excellent information, experiences and images.

//edit - also, one of the best behaved topics for CM which is not an easy thing to do with this many posts.

[Priceless]

For those with wider interests than standards for 24-hour average pollution levels, here is some information on yearly averages;

These figures are for 2008 and Chiang Mai was, and has remained since, in the group of cities in the WHO Intermediate Target 2 (IT-2), i.e. among the ~20% 'best'.

(Source: http://cleanairiniti.../AQ_in_Asia.pdf )

/ Priceless

[Mapguy]

Tywais,

I hope you do not drop this thread from the pinned list. Perhaps the title can be changed. Here's why I hope you'll reconsider:

Firstly, the effort was to gather together all the miscellaneous threads for 2012, just as they pop up annually when interest level is high, to avoid the confusion of too many threads basically on the same topic. But there has been much useful posted that is relevant generally to the problem of air pollution over the years, not just in 2012 Hate to lose it. Very useful information has been posted in previous years' threads but buried. It is simply not so easy and certainly not efficient to get to it again using the search engine.

Also, because relevant information is found throughout the year not specific to 2012, but after the annual hubbub subsides, where is it to be posted? Open another new thread?

Why not change the thread title to be more general, such as "Air Pollution in Chiang Mai" and append an editorial note before the first post explaining that the thread was begun in 2012, but that there are resources and information relevant to any year including comparative data.

[MESmith]

Tywais,

I hope you do not drop this thread from the pinned list. Perhaps the title can be changed. Here's why I hope you'll reconsider:

Firstly, the effort was to gather together all the miscellaneous threads for 2012, just as they pop up annually when interest level is high, to avoid the confusion of too many threads basically on the same topic. But there has been much useful posted that is relevant generally to the problem of air pollution over the years, not just in 2012 Hate to lose it. Very useful information has been posted in previous years' threads but buried. It is simply not so easy and certainly not efficient to get to it again using the search engine.

Also, because relevant information is found throughout the year not specific to 2012, but after the annual hubbub subsides, where is it to be posted? Open another new thread?

Why not change the thread title to be more general, such as "Air Pollution in Chiang Mai" and append an editorial note before the first post explaining that the thread was begun in 2012, but that there are resources and information relevant to any year including comparative data.

+1

[Awk]

Saying the USA has a limit of 150, as in the above quote, makes the Thai limit of 120 look quite good, does it not?

But the US limit of 150 is a limit that, to quote http://www.epa.gov/air/criteria.html, is a limit that can "Not to be exceeded more than once per year on average over 3 years".

What relation does that have to the Thai limit of 120, presumably per 24h average? What is the point of comparing these two very different limits? Hell if I know.

The Thai limit may not ever be exceeded. That in fact it is, puts Thailand in the same group with USA and EU that don't live up to their limits, either. (E.g. 20-25% of the urban EU population live in areas where the 35 times per year llimit is exceeded.)

/ Priceless

My apologies. You appear to be right and I was a bit quick when saying that.

[Tywais]

I hope you do not drop this thread from the pinned list. Perhaps the title can be changed. Here's why I hope you'll reconsider:

Thanks for your feedback Mapguy. I have no problems with leaving it as is as long as no complaints about the number of pinned topics, which I try to keep 'manageable', start popping up.

As for title change, we can't do that, especially a topic as big as this one has become, as it can cause issues with search engines and especially with e-mail updates to members who have subscribed to the topic. However, I can add something to the Description line, which is empty at the moment, without causing problems.

[WinnieTheKhwai]

As for leaving it, nobody with a question on air quality is going to read thought 34 pages anyway..

And dropping off the pinned list is not the same as binning the topic; it'll still be on the forum forever, and can be linked to if a question comes up.

[T_Dog]

We are experiencing major smoke at the moment after a stellar clear day that even had a little rain. Someone up the mountain has set a major fire and the down slope winds are carrying it right down. It smells just like a smokey campfire on a wet day. Saw a villager earlier today light off a roof he had just torn down. If there is no more rain, we could be back where we were fairly fast. The habits haven't changed but the wet fodder has made things more difficult.

[MESmith]

Keeping it pinned means that anyone visiting this sub-forum & contemplating relocating to Chiang Mai is well aware of the pollution problems they will encounter.

[FarangBha]

^ anything that makes em reconsider. (yeah, I'm a nasty so and so).

[Priceless]

Saying the USA has a limit of 150, as in the above quote, makes the Thai limit of 120 look quite good, does it not?

But the US limit of 150 is a limit that, to quote http://www.epa.gov/air/criteria.html, is a limit that can "Not to be exceeded more than once per year on average over 3 years".

What relation does that have to the Thai limit of 120, presumably per 24h average? What is the point of comparing these two very different limits? Hell if I know.

The Thai limit may not ever be exceeded. That in fact it is, puts Thailand in the same group with USA and EU that don't live up to their limits, either. (E.g. 20-25% of the urban EU population live in areas where the 35 times per year llimit is exceeded.)

/ Priceless

My apologies. You appear to be right and I was a bit quick when saying that.

Apologies accepted

/ Priceless

[Mapguy]

As for leaving it, nobody with a question on air quality is going to read thought 34 pages anyway..

And dropping off the pinned list is not the same as binning the topic; it'll still be on the forum forever, and can be linked to if a question comes up.

I agree that people aren't into reading 34 pages for various reasons. Sometimes it is just too much of a slog, sometimes there is a silly turn, sometimes the discussion, particularly about statistics, gets rather onerous. BUT, you might as well bin the thread if it is thrown into the maw of TV Chiang Mai "archives." "Linking," as you put it, is not so easy as it seems. It becomes one of many, many threads on the topic, some with some rather odd titles. (I don't think the current title of this thread is the best, but what the h***; it gets the idea across.)

Tywais has some legitimate technical concerns. And too many pinned threads can be annoying to some. (What's so hard about a little scrolling, anyway?) I think that Tywais' suggestion about a "preface" is a workable one given that the title can't otherwise be changed. All in all, I think the importance of the topic trumps concerns.

[Tywais]

(I don't think the current title of this thread is the best, but what the h***; it gets the idea across.)

Being an admin sometimes I have to think of titles with search engine impact factors. Within 2 days of my creating the topic, Google search for smog Chiang Mai put us on the top of the list.

[WinnieTheKhwai]

Keeping it pinned means that anyone visiting this sub-forum & contemplating relocating to Chiang Mai is well aware of the pollution problems they will encounter.

True.. I kind of agree with that.. And as FarangBha said, anything that has the potential to slow down the current Farang Tsunami that's hitting Chiang Mai's shores is worth doing.

How about a mix: Pin (and close) a new topic named something like 'Chiang Mai F.A.Q.' or 'Chiang Mai Famous Topics' and in there in the first post link a bunch of very useful discussions that tend to come up again and again. This one could be one of them. That means the list of pinned topics doesn't extend because some of them can be un-pinned and then linked from that new post. (Including the Immigration one, Doctors and specialists, and the CM Google Map.)

[Quadro]

Last month / Last week / Yesterday

Now it's already crystal clear. Even the thunderlights in the background can be seen.

[mesquite]

Last month / Last week / Yesterday

Now it's already crystal clear. Even the thunderlights in the background can be seen.

Thanks, Quadro. I'm not in CM now and have been wondering what the air was like from a boots on the ground standpoint. Good job.

[orang37]

Personally, I'd like to see this topic remained "pinned:" the one slight paradox I see resulting from that is that the great majority of posts will remain about the worst season/days here, and I'd expect to see relatively fewer posts about "excellent days of good air," as the year goes on.

Well, let's imagine a scenario in which many resident members did post a report every week mentioning how happy they were they could see the mountain, or breathe in sweet air: then the topic becomes ever longer, and a newcomer, or casual visitor, wonders where the "meat" of the topic is amongst a huge number of pages.

Ideally (easy for me to say !), I'd like to see, when you opened the pinned topic, a set of links, perhaps six, each representing all the messages in six specific periods: two months of the year. But, I recognize this may not be technically feasible given the constraints of the structure of TV's server-side code-base, database, etc.

Note that one can already achieve something like this Google Advanced Search (and I often use that, rather than search on ThaiVisa):

http://February OR March "Smoke Smog Dust 2012 Chiang Mai" site:thaivisa.com

The above Google Advanced search locates links which contain the exact title of the thread, and also include either of the words "February," or "March." The results may not have the ideal "granularty," but are quite useful, to me.

And, of course, once you have the results of that search, you can use the additional Google time filters, present in the left side of the resulting web page, to narrow the dates, including specifying a specific range of dates: like this:

https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&tbs=qdr:y&q=February+OR+March+%22Smoke+Smog+Dust+2012+Chiang+Mai%22+site:thaivisa.com&oq=February+OR+March+%22Smoke+Smog+Dust+2012+Chiang+Mai%22+site:thaivisa.com&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_l=serp.12...101740l103368l0l105802l2l2l0l0l0l0l87l164l2l2l0.frgbld.&pbx=1&biw=1280&bih=681&cad=cbv&sei=UNuET5j_KMmtrAfAhqDdBg#q=February+OR+March+%22Smoke+Smog+Dust+2012+Chiang+Mai%22+site%3Athaivisa.com&hl=en&lr=&safe=off&prmd=imvns&sa=X&ei=ttyET--NDMLyrQeO_bDKBg&ved=0CA8QpwUoBg&source=lnt&tbs=cdr:1%2Ccd_min%3A1%2F1%2F2012%2Ccd_max%3A4%2F11%2F2012&tbm=&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&fp=7db0b50b83c4e821&biw=1280&bih=681

The link above returns the results of the first search filtered by being created in the time period Jan 1, 2012 to April 11, 2012.

best, ~o:37;

[chiang mai]

A good point, it's all about achieving a balance and painting an accurate picture. To that end, hows' about twelve separate threads under one pinned topic, "what's Chiang Mai like during xxx", maybe then can describe life here during times other than just the burning season?

Edited April 11, 2012 by chiang mai

[harrry]

Priceless, we could probably do with a post on how many months or days CM exceeds other standards such as 50ppm. It would be interesting to see how many days are really more acceptable.

[Priceless]

Priceless, we could probably do with a post on how many months or days CM exceeds other standards such as 50ppm. It would be interesting to see how many days are really more acceptable.

Last year (i.e. 2011) there were 284 observations below or equal to 50 µg/m³, 55 observations >50 µg/m³ and 26 missing observations.

/ Priceless

[nikster]

This is a very important article written by a doctor at the Faculty of Medicine in Chiang Mai, which reveals that our 'accepted safety level' of 120 microgrammes for particles less then 10 microns - is more than double the maximum safety level of 50 microgrammes set by the World Health Organisation (WHO)

The author goes on to say:

'With haze, we tend to discuss just the damage to tourism, scenery, visibility, and sore eyes and noses. Those impacts are small when compared with the long-term health risks. How many people in the North will die of cancer because of it?''

The full article is here

+1

Totally. I think the people that are hurt the most are the locals right here.

I scanned the web a bit and found an older study on PM 10 levels in Austria where I am from. They used 50 as the threshold for "bad" pollution. It seems to be the accepted standard when talking about PM10 pollution.

We've got a serious problem here and the first step to solving it is to accept that there is a problem.

[harrry]

Priceless, we could probably do with a post on how many months or days CM exceeds other standards such as 50ppm. It would be interesting to see how many days are really more acceptable.

Last year (i.e. 2011) there were 284 observations below or equal to 50 µg/m³, 55 observations >50 µg/m³ and 26 missing observations.

/ Priceless

last year was a really good one but that is interesting. THanks

[Priceless]

Priceless, we could probably do with a post on how many months or days CM exceeds other standards such as 50ppm. It would be interesting to see how many days are really more acceptable.

Last year (i.e. 2011) there were 284 observations below or equal to 50 µg/m³, 55 observations >50 µg/m³ and 26 missing observations.

/ Priceless

last year was a really good one but that is interesting. THanks

Well, you asked for 50 µg/m³, which I didn't have ready-made If you don't mind a graph (a lot of people seem to do that), here you can see the percentage of different PM10 concentrations over the last ten years and a bit, 3,283 observations. The mean is 46.2 µg/m³ and the median (i.e. half are higher, half are lower) is 34.7:

/ Priceless

Edited April 12, 2012 by Priceless

[harrry]

O am I right in guessing that based on that graph on average the PM10 would meet the EU standards of less that 50 for 330 days.

Edited April 12, 2012 by harrry

[Priceless]

O am I right in guessing that based on that graph on average the PM10 would meet the EU standards of less that 50 for 330 days.

No, unfortunately that is not the case, in particulat because the graph includes a lot of data from the earlier years. You might not believe it after March of this year, but Chiang Mai has been on a very positive trend since at least 2004. In spite of this trend, we are not yet (if ever) at the level stipulated by the EU standard. Neither are large portions of the EU, as indicated by the following quote from the latest (2011) EU Air Quality Report (LV is the Limit Value, i.e.not more than 35 exceedences of 50 µg/m3 per year):

'In 2009, the PM10 24-hour LV was exceeded at 30 % of traffic sites, 31 % of urban background sites, 18 % of 'other' sites (mostly industrial) and even at 6 % of rural sites. The highest concentration measured in the EU was almost three times the LV, and in EEA-32 countries almost four times the LV.'

What is often overlooked in discussions on this forum is that the EU has two standards for PM10 pollution, one concerning 24-hour averages and one concerning yearly averages. The EU limit for yearly average is 40 µg/m3, a level Chiang Mai achieved in 2008 (38.4) and 2011 (33.5) and only slightly exceeded in 2006 (40.5) and 2009 (41.6).

/ Priceless

Edited April 12, 2012 by Priceless

[mesquite]

Question: There is no rain in the forecast for the next week or so. Can anyone there in CM speculate on whether or not the air will return to 120+ levels soon? I'm wondering if the last rains soaked the ground so much that burning is not possible, or will it be "burning as usual" throughout Sonkgran, leading to very bad air right after?

[Priceless]

Question: There is no rain in the forecast for the next week or so. Can anyone there in CM speculate on whether or not the air will return to 120+ levels soon? I'm wondering if the last rains soaked the ground so much that burning is not possible, or will it be "burning as usual" throughout Sonkgran, leading to very bad air right after?

I wouldn't dare make a forecast. I would however be very surprised if we see another 120+ day before February of next year, at the earliest.

/ Priceless

[mcgriffith]

Question: There is no rain in the forecast for the next week or so. Can anyone there in CM speculate on whether or not the air will return to 120+ levels soon? I'm wondering if the last rains soaked the ground so much that burning is not possible, or will it be "burning as usual" throughout Sonkgran, leading to very bad air right after?

Burning is still possible. This photo was taken about 1/2 hour ago. Fire above the Royal Navy station on Doi Suthep road:

This was taken a few minutes ago. The fire is burning up the ridgeline now:

EDIT- added this photo. The fire has burned a good ways up the ridge from where it started:

[MESmith]

There is a lot of burning all year round. Obviously more in the dry season, but burning is 365 days a year. But if there is frequent rain the pollution is localized.