The air pollution crisis which now sees the entire north of Thailand engulfed in toxic smoke as reported in The Nation on 21st March and with various updates at ChiangMaiCityNews.com shows how poorly thought out is the government campaign of 90 days of no burning.
The government was urged in May last year by Our Chiang Mai to launch a nation-wide program against burning to start with a July announcement by the Prime Minister that burning must cease by October . We called for a special effort to assist farmers including sending vacation students to the cool of the hills to help fire free preparation of fields for crops.
In the event the government, to its credit did take action, but too little by only restricting burning in the north while unchecked fire in places such as Nakhon Sawan led to dangerous pollution levels there, and also too late.
A major change in behavior takes time, just as extinguishing a major wildfire does. The plea of the Breathe Campaign went unheeded and it was not until after the National Health Commission reported in December that the government acted.
The recommendation from the Chiang Mai consultation of the Health Commission that the Prime Minister, or Deputy PM personally direct a no burning campaign was adopted by the government and Deputy PM Plodprasop is in charge.
However the suggestion to send students to the countryside has not been adopted. Surely having tens of thousands of young people camping in the hills with the farmers would have made a far greater impact on the psyche of the nation than exhortations and orders from officialdom?
With the failure of this years No Burning Campaign we now see that there is no back-up plan. We adults have failed our children. So what can now be done?
In war time Britain with the Nazi blitz bombing of England’s cities saving the children was top priority. The solution was not to hide them in cellars like is being suggested as we are advised to keep children indoors so they cannot run and play. The children of Britain were sent to the freedom of the countryside.
Chiang Mai can do the same. While the PM10 reading downtown was over 200 ppb, at the Phuphing Palace on Doi Suthep the air was clean at 42 ppb according to ChiangMaiCityNews.com.
So please ask the King to open the palace gates and welcome children to camp in the grounds and the staff accommodation buildings. And perhaps the hills villagers of Nan and Mae Hong Son can also welcome children as we proposed ten months ago?
Sending them to the countryside? Depends exactly where! I left the Mae Rim district early this year after selling my dream home because of the bad air. I have children and it was their health I was particularly concerned about.
Everywhere around us during the dry season, there were fires either lit by villagers burning trash or farmers burning vegetation. Not just rice farmers but flower growers too. Even on very smoky days, the villagers still burnt their trash etc.
The only solution is a huge public education campaign, beginning in the schools, alongside an effective police force and fire department.
A snowflakes chance in hell of this happening with the current Thai mindset!
I tried to make it clear that if the reports of low pollution on the high mountains are correct, then take the children there. If village folk in the valley where their smoke is trapped by a cold air inversion see that the kids are being taken away for their health, this will surely cause ripples turning into waves of action to solve this problem.
What countryside? I’ve driven all over the country. Eastern Nan mountains, burnt to a wasteland. Doi Mae Salong in the west the same. Mae Hong Song could not land airplanes, nor could Tak. The government passes laws but they don’t enforce them. Contract farming of corn for ethanol is one of the big contributors of foul air. There is many evil baht involved for greedy people that already have too much, the farmers are actually hurt just as in the rice scheme. Corruption as usual is at the base of the problem.
One can’t assume that being on the mountains will help avoid the worst smoke. You only have to look at the mountains from the valleys below (if you can see them), to see fires all over the place.
The whole region just is not safe if you value your health and want to live out your full life expectancy.
Paul – Making assumptions without evidence is of course unwise. However we have evidence e.g. the low PM10 reading high on Doi Suthep and research. Please refer to this paper from CMU
which refers to the temperature inversion which traps pollution in the valley:
http://cdn.intechopen.com/pdfs/30054/InTech-Pm10_and_its_chemical_composition_a_case_study_in_chiang_mai_thailand.pdf
” In the dry season, there is a low level of precipitation, and there are calm winds
and a vertical temperature inversion, while air pollutants are generated from various
sources of mostly anthropogenic activities and accumulate in the lower atmosphere and
definitely have an effect on human health and the environment. “
Where can I find PM10 reading for Phuphing Palace on Doi Suthep? I don’t see it at chiangmaicitynews.com, with its hodgepodge of articles and ads presented in a very difficult way to go through and read. I clicked on “Environment,” but saw no current air pollution readings, and no such readings for Phuphing Palace on Doi Suthep appear at the usual sites, so I wonder where these numbers come from. I suppose I can jump in the car and drive up there in the morning, but somehow I have little faith that the air will be any better there than by the moat. Being constantly lied to by my own government for so many years has made me jaded and distrustful, so I suppose that I have come to Thailand pre-conditioned to distrust authority.
Well you said it “Jaded & distrustful” . As it turns out chiangmaicitynews.com wrote BhuBhing.You would be doing the children a service if you were to go to the palace and report here on your findings.
I just slogged through the turgid and overly long website mentioned above at http://cdn.intechopen.com/pdfs/30054/InTech-Pm10_and_its_chemical_composition_a_case_study_in_chiang_mai_thailand.pdf
No indication there of any source for current readings of air quality at Doi Suthep.
I suggest you omit the gratuitous insults. That was an academic paper so obviously not a source of current readings.
Here’s the latest – 23rd March satellite image from our fire guru in Germany Dr Johann Goldammer:
Folks, Ricky,
here our forecast for tomorrow:
http://www.fire.uni-freiburg.de/GFMCnew/2013/03/23/20130323_th.htm
Similar will be the next 7 days, while Viet Nam and Lao may
become less risky.
Cheers
Johann
Well i would say : evacuate everybody !
It’s a horror now.
I really think that a boycott would have a immediate effect to deal with this problem. Not only in chiang mai and in thailand : tourist and expats should be well aware of this big pollution, and avoid the whole area in march-april, explaining why to the locals. I’m pretty sure they would take a money effect much more seriously:)
Call me cynical, but I reckon Phuphing Palace could be on fire itself, surrounded by a wall of burning car tyres and they’d still report the PM10 levels as safe and the air clean.
As for the suggestion of sending the kids to Mae Hong Son, with PM10 levels there reaching 400ppb, I’d rather not!
No wonder we have no solutions of problems in sight when we see the overwhelming cynicism in responses.
To clarify the issue:; the suggestion is to send children who are most at risk from pollution, to camp at high elevations in a region where all the smoke polluted valleys are surrounded by mountain ranges.
The report of clean air is entirely plausible because of a temperature inversion which acts as lid keeping the pollution trapped in valleys, just as there is a similar problem in Los Angeles with their auto exhausts.
I regret that I am not in the north at present, so it would be helpful if one or more of the commentators were to visit the environment office and clear the air on this issue.
from Shana:
” I just read the comments and the temperature inversion issue is real, regardless of what some of your readers may think. I don’t know it happens here but considering the topography I would assume so.
I have family in Denver which has mountains on one side and resides in a bowl and they get inversions in the summer that are just dreadful. They do get some terrible forest fires which the authorities of course do work to suppress but the mountains are big and have a lot of forest and Denver is a high dry desert so. Well as you can see the conditions are ripe.
In many ways Chiang Mai is quite similar. The thing I don’t know and have not been able to find out is if they have an active forest fire fighting brigade? “
Just called in on the Regional Environment Office behind Wat 7 Yot.
There I was given a one page report of PM10 readings day-by-day for each of 16 northern area
sampling stations for 22 days of April including Phuping Palace which has consistently had readings around half to 2/3 of the EU maximum allowable level of 60 miocrogrammes/m3 i.e. their standards are twice as rigorous as in Thailand.
Day 01,02,03,04,05,06,07,08,09,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22
pm10 38,37,39,44,38,36,35,36,36,41,36,38,29,25,29,23,26,27,28,30,31,23
And it seems nobody took my advice to take their kids to camp at the palace, so the cavalier approach to safety on the roads by as you say a sub-culture appears to be universal when it comes to the health of children.