Smoke, Smog, Dust 2016-2017 Chiang Mai

[Tywais]

New 2016-2017 topic for fire & smoke conditions in Chiang Mai.

Members can report the conditions in their area and updates of the pollution numbers (PCD) and questions in this topic. Also published news updates regarding local conditions.

aqmthai.com Air Quality Index

Regional Daily Air Quality Data

Air Quality Standards Thailand

Smoke, Smog, Dust 2015 Chiang Mai for reference.

Fire Reports Chiang Mai Facebook Group

[Tywais]

Active firemap, updates automatically every 8 hours.

[Thailand]

Stinking around Hangdong,canal road this morning.Smoke quite visible in a number of areas and Doi Suthep starting to disappear. The village at the back of our moo baan have burnt just about everything they could in the last few days with ash falling around a large area.The worst of the burning right next door to the village headmans house/office.

It's going to be a bad long season this year I think.

[MESmith]

Cr@p view from Doi Suthep today. Hopefully, after a dry, wet season, less to burn...

[Sparkles]

Swimming at Kwang Vieng pool,Hang Dong, yesterday ash was falling in the pool from fires maybe a km away.

Lot of smoke which authorities obviously can't see. Makes a mockery of everything that has been promised and we are still in Decemeber.

Driving towards CM Doi Suthep was barely visible at 11.30am

[blueyeshk]

Just to give the pain of the coming month a picture what we are dealing with

[TheScribe]

Anyone know where to buy a good filter/protection mask, and a hand-held pollution monitoring kit? (CM preferably, BKK if needs be.)

[blueyeshk]

Aliexpress but might be to late to order there - fastech is another option

[naboo]

I drive in to Chiang Mai every morning from the south. From about Thai Watsadu on the superhighway, the pollution becomes noticeable. South of there there is very little.

Today, I was stuck in stop start traffic from Central Festival to Thapae Gate.

I'm blaming the current pollution on the cooler air and heavier traffic combination.

[MESmith]

Quite a lot of burning around SK, Saraphi

Edited December 23, 2015 by MESmith

[Awk]

Anyone know where to buy a good filter/protection mask, and a hand-held pollution monitoring kit? (CM preferably, BKK if needs be.)

The 3M shop on Wulai road sells 3M N95 masks in bulk, both child and adult sizes.

Hand held pollution monitoring: http://www.dylosproducts.com/

[TheScribe]

Where is Wulai road? Bangkok, Chiangmai?

[MESmith]

Where is Wulai road? Bangkok, Chiangmai?

Take a guess

[MESmith]

Out & about east of SK today. The smoke generators (it's not mist) were in full swing

[WaiLai]

Cr@p view from Doi Suthep today. Hopefully, after a dry, wet season, less to burn...

a dry, wet season, less to burn?

hehehehe

into the cups already mate?

[MESmith]

Cr@p view from Doi Suthep today. Hopefully, after a dry, wet season, less to burn...

a dry, wet season, less to burn?

hehehehe

into the cups already mate?

Dry "wet season" = less rain, less growth, less to burn. Comprendez? Keep of the sauce

[WaiLai]

Out & about east of SK today. The smoke generators (it's not mist) were in full swing

the locals have caught on as to when to burn and go unnoticed - they've been "discreetly" burning for months now

and those beautiful no burning" signs put up by the government of the province along the motorways?

they'll make a lovely sunshade for someone in need of one

[blueyeshk]

There is always something to burn even in the famous mountain retreat town of Pai - beautiful mountains na?

[WaiLai]

Cr@p view from Doi Suthep today. Hopefully, after a dry, wet season, less to burn...

a dry, wet season, less to burn?

hehehehe

into the cups already mate?

Dry "wet season" = less rain, less growth, less to burn. Comprendez? Keep of the sauce

the "dry season" is upon us

the wet season is down the road somewhere

the burning season is about to blossom

Comprendez-vous? would have been more appropriate

drunkards will lie in any ditch and spout what is reality

Edited December 27, 2015 by WaiLai

[vivid]

Hi guys, greetings from Singapore. I last participated in the 2015 thread. How have you been.

This 2016 Thai season is gonna be interesting, coz officially 2015/2016 is a Super El Nino year. We just passed the peak.

I recall 2015 Thailand areas like Chiang Rai peaked at about 600 ug/m3 PM10 (1hr)

Indonesian haze this year peaked at 1-hr PM10 3334 ug/m3 on around Oct 20-22, at Palangkaraya on Borneo island.

Singapore was affected and peaked at 1-hr PM2.5 of 471 ug/m3 on 19th Oct.

At its peak, it affected Southern Thailand (Hat Yai, Phuket) and also Laos/Vietnam.

Just some videos, a lot of which is applicable to N Thailand as well.

Short BBC documentary on the Indonesian haze

Ground zero, extreme low visibilty

Edited December 30, 2015 by vivid

[vivid]

I will share in end Feb/Mar detailed near real-time satellite photos by ASMC showing hotspots and smoke columns from them, and also visible images.

They have been extremely valuable from our experience here in a Singapore forum in predicting haze etc.

In-depth documentary about the Indonesian haze 2015

[vivid]

1-hr and 8-hr breakpoints (PM2.5 ug/m3 concentrations) for Unhealthy, Very Unhealthy and Hazardous Health Advisories. See if you'd wanna follow this type of shorter term health advisories.

This has been very valuable to us, because the haze levels here in SG was extremely volatile at times. We could not afford to wait 24hrs for the official AQI Health Advisories.

[vivid]

Sharing these documentaries too, pretty interesting. Quite applicable to Thailand haze as well.

Edited December 30, 2015 by vivid

[vivid]

Hmm...each post has a limit of 2 vids.

[vivid]

The 3M shop on Wulai road sells 3M N95 masks in bulk, both child and adult sizes.

Hand held pollution monitoring: http://www.dylosproducts.com/

Hey bro, I remember you having the dylos and also the 2 x Blueair 650.

In 2015 after I stopped posting in the thaivisa thread, it became clear that the Indonesian haze is going to be very severe due to the El Nino signals (sea surface temps, El Nino atmospheric index etc). Procured a lot of toys.

In the video are 2 Chinese air purifiers (one of which is controllable from your mobile phone via cloud and WiFi, really cool) and a Samsung AX40. 3 laser particle counters from China (gotten from taobao). Unfortunately, there is no easy way to buy such stuff from Thailand.

BTW, I found that the 3M Filtrete airconditiong filter is not very effective at high concentrations of haze (eg > 100 ug/m3 PM2.5) and also if your house is leaky.

Also, we found that all measurement equipment, be it optical (laser particle counters) or BAM (Beta-ray Attenuation Method) monitors need to stabilise the intake RH % at 35% in order to be accurate.

You can DIY heat up the air, but for our china-based particle counters, we just apply a % conversion factor for convenience. When compared to the official data, we can get pretty close.

This is how our govt measures it, intake air is pre-heated before measurement.

Without RH % compensation at the intake, pretty close to the pros.

MetOne BAM 1020. I think it costs USD30k.

[HullyGully]

I was in Kalimantan in October 2015, the situation was terrible, you could not see 50 metres at times

I read recently, that the Indonesian Government have followed Singapore lead and hit Companies who burn with large fines

Its about time the ASEAN countries got serious, and stopped these Companies burning each year

Its simple hit them hard...LARGE FINES AND / OR IMPRISONMENT

The cost to the people health and countries runs into millions

[northernjohn]

I was in Kalimantan in October 2015, the situation was terrible, you could not see 50 metres at times

I read recently, that the Indonesian Government have followed Singapore lead and hit Companies who burn with large fines

Its about time the ASEAN countries got serious, and stopped these Companies burning each year

Its simple hit them hard...LARGE FINES AND / OR IMPRISONMENT

The cost to the people health and countries runs into millions

Sounds good to me. How much of it is caused by large companies here in Chiang Mai?

[Mapguy]

That's a very good question, and one of the first to ask.

As I recall, one very large company, CP, is now "working" with the government on a campaign to mitigate burning, and the target there is primarily corn. The place to start looking, outside of rice production, is probably the biofuel and feedstock agribusiness companies.

My hunch is that while some large tenent-farmed tracts (as with rice production) may be owned by some companies but that there are more contracts made ultimately with small to medium-sized middlemen and growers. This no doubt complicates new and existing regulation and enforcement.

Not that some progress isn't being made more generally with improving recognition of the problem and changing peoples' attitudes. Just to pick a local example, look at TV Chiang Mai where, years ago, there was a persistent group of posters who denied being personally affected by air pollution! This parallels the change of attitudes (and later customary behavior and laws) regarding smoking tobacco. And then there were some who got into rather pointless lengthy presentations of information about whether or not things were better or worse in Chiang Mai over the years! We haven't seen those kinds of posts in recent years, but the number of posts asking where to buy face masks and air purifiers has increased quite a bit.

Edited January 3, 2016 by Mapguy

[Thailand]

The main perpetrators are the landowners themselves, the rich elite and their associates.

Heavy fines on landowners has worked in other countries but this lot are hardly likely to fine themselves.

[Nowisee]

Smokey in CM today.
The smoke I see is looking mostly to the east and south from around the CMU area.

Can't see much past Kad Suan Kaew and the eastern mountain range is not visible at all.

Any folks out past the city 12+ kilometers smoke free?