Smog forces all Bangkok schools to close

[Stickman]

8 hours ago, Mekong said:

iMHO it was a lot worse 20-25 years ago but since data was not being kept back then no way to make a comparison. I am not coughing my guts up or struggling for breath, in fact the Air Quality Index is lower now I am home in Bangkok for a few days than it has been where I work / live in Vietnam, and I suppose packing in smoking after 40 years also helps a little.

When I returned home after my first trip to Thailand in the late '90s of which just 2.5 days were spent in Bangkok at the end of the trip, colleagues thought I had taken up smoking for I was coughing so much, a cough that lasted for a couple of weeks.

And when I visited Hanoi for the only time in early 2012, I returned to Bangkok with a cough that lingered on and off and which I did not manage to shake for some months.

I do worry a little about the smog in Bangkok these days which is largely due to what's being said in the news, but as you rightly point out, the lack of date and the inability to know whether it really is worse now or not is a major frustration.

[Mekong]

Ha Ha Ha Noi is clean compared to Hai Phong and Thai Binh on the coast, the industrial areas and it is worse when the winds are from the North I.e. China.

As I said PM2.5 is this years “Buzzword” driven by the media who, IMHO, do not fully understand Particulate Matter. I am not claiming to be an expert on Emmissions  but burning multi millions Tonnes of Coal a year, the major contributor to PM2.5, and having in place such measures as, SCR (Selective Catalytic Reduction), ESP (Elecrostatic Precipitators) and FGD (Flue Gas Desulpurfurization) to limit such, I may understand more than your average Joe.

Is it getting worse? I don’t think so, but that is just my opinion. As I stated, I have vivid recollections of seeing Bangkok covered in a “Mango Dome” when approaching the city from the East back in the days when monitoring was not in place, I am not seeing similar in 2019 / 2562 or maybe my imagination is playing tricks on me and being an old sentimental fool

 

 

[Coss]

https://www.msn.com/en-nz/news/world/nearly-450-schools-shut-as-pollution-chokes-thai-capital/ar-BBZdBrx?li=BBSVbAt#image=BBZdBrx_1|1

Nearly 450 schools shut as pollution chokes Thai capital

 

not that many noticed...