Smoke, Smog, Dust 2018 Chiang Mai

[om3n1rpak]

Was able to capture sunspots through the smoke. Usually you need very dark (and very expensive) specialized solar filters to capture images like this.

 

The sunspots are faint, but visible at the very bottom of the disk.

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

20 minutes ago, Samuel Smith said:

Bill shouldn't be high.  It's only a fan, not an aircon.  You have removed the wrapper from the filter ???? 

 

My Sharp purifier bought in Thailand and sized for a 20 sq mt room uses about 50 watts of power on high fan speed.

 

My much larger and more powerful Honeywell purifier designed for a room about 20 feet x 20 feet uses about 200 watts on high fan speed.

 

[Greenside]

I've only just started with mine but setting it to manual and putting in the room size seemed to work fine as did Auto and today it maintained a 60 m³ room at 40-50 despite children frequently forgetting to shut the door.  It kept a 75 m­³ bedroom room at about 40 overnight on night setting which is virtually silent.  I'm sure there are better and worse machines out there but since the place I used to live in England is showing 35 today, I'll settle for those figures.  By the way, if anyone has the same model and can't get the wi-fi connection to work, change the server location from the default (mine showed Singapore) to Mainland China.

[vivid]

Some of the station PM2.5 levels are rising again @ 1800h.   Probably will be rising till past midnight where it'll rise even faster and into the late morning as usual, i guess.

 

eg Sarapee hospital, HPC 1, RHIES CMU, Yupparaj, True Regional Office, IV, T. Pa Dad CNX, CMU Mae Hia.  

[Samuel Smith]

11 minutes ago, vivid said:

Some of the station PM2.5 levels are rising again @ 1800h.   Probably will be rising till past midnight where it'll rise even faster and into the late morning as usual, i guess.

 

eg Sarapee hospital, HPC 1, RHIES CMU, Yupparaj, True Regional Office, IV, T. Pa Dad CNX, CMU Mae Hia.  

The smog didn't clear at all today, so maybe Chiang Mai can break the 600 level tomorrow!

[vivid]

 

[vivid]

7 minutes ago, Samuel Smith said:

The smog didn't clear at all today, so maybe Chiang Mai can break the 600 level tomorrow!

The winds and met conditions are forecasted not to vary much from today.  So it's likely that the smoke will be able to build overnight and i reckon the fires are still active.  The inversion layer will form tonight for sure as usual.

 

Lets see what tomorrow brings. 

[jimgilly]

Unfortunately I feel the fate for many of you in CM has already been sealed.  Just like certain levels of radiation exposure can have long term and fatal effects, the same is true with the high levels of air pollution you are experiencing in CM.

 

The levels have been so high and for so long I believe many of you have already been subjected to permanent damage that will surface not immediately, but in the reasonable future.  By reasonable, we are perhaps talking about a time frame from 1 to 3 years.  If you've recently arrived then perhaps not so bad for long term stayers you should be very concerned.

 

Anyone who has acted as this is a trivial matter will not think so when they become a victim down the road.  Of course, they will pass it off as something unrelated but in their final moments I'm sure they will reflect back on when they were warned how harmful air pollution is and the fact CM has reached levels that are surely destroying the health of every man, woman and child exposed to it. 
 

Sorry for such a negative post but this is life and death and many of you still don't get it.

'

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

As of Saturday morning, courtesy of AirVisual:

 

No. 1 by  a wide margin today...

 

 

I see TVF had a separate thread on CM's air quality ranking earlier in the day:

 

 

[khunpa]

6 minutes ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

As of Saturday morning, courtesy of AirVisual:

 

No. 1 by  a wide margin today...

 

Yeah, they can be really proud. Time for us to leave CM.

 

 

[khunpa]

15 minutes ago, jimgilly said:

Unfortunately I feel the fate for many of you in CM has already been sealed.  Just like certain levels of radiation exposure can have long term and fatal effects, the same is true with the high levels of air pollution you are experiencing in CM.

 

The levels have been so high and for so long I believe many of you have already been subjected to permanent damage that will surface not immediately, but in the reasonable future.  By reasonable, we are perhaps talking about a time frame from 1 to 3 years.  If you've recently arrived then perhaps not so bad for long term stayers you should be very concerned.

 

Anyone who has acted as this is a trivial matter will not think so when they become a victim down the road.  Of course, they will pass it off as something unrelated but in their final moments I'm sure they will reflect back on when they were warned how harmful air pollution is and the fact CM has reached levels that are surely destroying the health of every man, woman and child exposed to it. 
 

Sorry for such a negative post but this is life and death and many of you still don't get it.

'

 

I think you are right. Also why our family from now on will leave CM for 2-3 months every year. 

I am mostly amazed of the government doing nothing. But of course it is Thailand, so there is no reason to ask "why?". 

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

6 minutes ago, khunpa said:

Yeah, they can be really proud. Time for us to leave CM.

 

 

 

 

It could be worse:

 

273 mcg of PM2.5 in CM as of 8 pm. AQI of 323. HAZARDOUS!

 

[khunpa]

14 minutes ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

 

 

It could be worse:

 

273 mcg of PM2.5 in CM as of 8 pm. AQI of 323. HAZARDOUS!

 

 

I simply can not believe that the government does nothing other than spray some water into the air. 

 

The stupidity just keeps amazing me. Unbelievable! 

[vivid]

Snapshot of early morning conditions

 

[vivid]

If the smoke levels do not plateau or slow down more, there is no doubt that it might hit well over 600 for today.

Another question is, how many stations will go past 600? 

Yesterday in Chiang Mai there were 4 stations hitting over 500 at its worst, how about today?

Will we see 5-6 stations surpassing 500 today? 

 

Some are displaying rises, some are rising very slowly or plateauing.

 

 

[vivid]

Quote

AQI in Chiang Mai is 650 now, 7:50 AM, Sat Mar 23, near Kad Suan Kaew.  NOT the 300s and 400's showing on the aqicn.org website.  One hour ago it was close to 750.  AQI is, however, around 200 in my room with two separate air filters at work.

 

There was a post stating it hit over 600/750, but i think that is from another site.   Not trying to say who is correct or incorrect, i think quite a few of us use aqicn.   Please do post additional info as soon as you have it. 

Thank you!  ????

[thaivisa63]

What are the alternatives for the farmers if they have any ? How can they keep doing those fires knowing they are sending children to the hospital ?

[motdaeng]

16 hours ago, thaivisa63 said:

I also got the xiaomi mi 2s and i'm strongly unsatisfied with it. Can't get below 140 right now

- with 140 µg/m3, there seems to be something wrong ..

- did you check the filter, is it correct installed?

- to get better results you also need to improve the sealing of your windows and your inside doors,

it will make a big different. with the high outside level of pm2.5, before i hardly got my rooms under 15 µg/m3

if using the sleep mode (very quiet).

- now in the bedrooms (20 m2) i do get about 7 µg/m3 (pm2.5), and this in the sleep mode from a 

sharp air purifier (for 24m2) . and this with outside air about 180 - 220 µg/m3!!

[scotbeve]

AFIS website of Chiang Mai hotspots live (as of this timestamp). CM is center screen and the coverage is a 200km radius. Hey! I have an idea! Why not let some "clever" Thai engineer convert/modify the "well used" submarine into to flying drone water tanker to extinguish the fires. We need to fire the government.... pun intended.

Sent from my SM-G950U1 using Thailand Forum - Thaivisa mobile app

[thaivisa63]

7 minutes ago, motdaeng said:

- with 140 µg/m3, there seems to be something wrong ..

- did you check the filter, is it correct installed?

- to get better results you also need to improve the sealing of your windows and your inside doors,

it will make a big different. with the high outside level of pm2.5, before i hardly got my rooms under 15 µg/m3

if using the sleep mode (very quiet).

- now in the bedrooms (20 m2) i do get about 7 µg/m3 (pm2.5), and this in the sleep mode from a 

sharp air purifier (for 24m2) . and this with outside air about 180 - 220 µg/m3!!

Where exactly do you read those numbers ? Same question to anyone who is satisfied with the xiaomi ? Do you read it on the xiaomi machine ? Because right now mine is showing 11 in my bedroom so great right ? Yes but my aqi calculator device is showing 65.... I believe it to be more accurate.

[motdaeng]

Just now, thaivisa63 said:

Where exactly do you read those numbers ? Same question to anyone who is satisfied with the xiaomi ? Do you read it on the xiaomi machine ? Because right now mine is showing 11 in my bedroom so great right ? Yes but my aqi calculator device is showing 65.... I believe it to be more accurate.

- pm2.5 µg/m3 and AQI are not the same!!!!

https://airnow.gov/index.cfm?action=aqibasics.aqi

https://airnow.gov/index.cfm?action=airnow.calculator

 

 

[motdaeng]

10 minutes ago, thaivisa63 said:

Where exactly do you read those numbers ? 

- i have an inside and outside pm2.5 meter ...

[thaivisa63]

Yes my aqi device has those numbers, it's showing 69 now with pm2.5 21µg/m3 while my xiaomi air purifier running at full speed all night is just showing one big number that i dont know what it correspond to that is 12.

[vivid]

As per AQICN @ 0700h for Chiang Mai

HPC-1 Chiang Mai = AQI 585

Yupparaj = AQI 549

Ban Thammapakorn = 491  (i think it hit 516 2hrs earlier)

 

Mae Taeng hospital = AQI 528

San Pa Tong hospital = AQI 508

 

 

3 other stations that are not in CM also surpassed AQI 500.

 

[Greenside]

It's definitely worth getting a second reading to check the accuracy of the Xiaomi.  I don't have a second meter handy, but putting the purifier outside shows 330 which is believable judging by the AQI map.  The room where the machine is now is steady at 40-45.

[vivid]

One more thing i noticed on AQICN while PM2.5 level is extremely important, PM10 is also quite important.

 

For take Lamphun for example.  Brown for PM2.5, Red for PM10.

 

 

Look at HPC and Yupparaj.  Both PM2.5 and PM10 loads are brown (hazardous). AQI index is such that it displays the highest AQI number of the pollutant that is responsible be it PM2.5, PM10, Ozone, SO2, NO2.   Nevertheless our bodies' reaction would also be the overall total load.  

 

So I believe it's also prudent to look at both PM2.5 and PM10.   To give an exaggerated example to illustrate better, if the PM10, Ozone, NO2 and SO2 AQI numbers are in the mid 500s, with the PM2.5 topping close to 600 like in HPC-1 station, then that'd really be EXTREME.  ????

 

I also suspect that the fires responsible are pretty close to the few Chiang Mai stations, coz if they were to be farther away, the PM10 would be comparatively lower.

 

[vivid]

In fact for HPC-1, the PM2.5 is AQI 581 but the PM10 is AQI 585.  So the AQI is 585.

Double whammy! 

[motdaeng]

23 minutes ago, thaivisa63 said:

Yes my aqi device has those numbers, it's showing 69 now with pm2.5 21µg/m3 while my xiaomi air purifier running at full speed all night is just showing one big number that i dont know what it correspond to that is 12.

Maybe this video helps ... i've tested (at the same time) four different models / brands of pm2.5 meters.
all had slightly different results (about 5 to a maximum of 20%). but on a low level of pm2.5, all had the similar level of pm2.5!

 

 

[vivid]

[piewarmer]

555 is no laughing matter, over 500 should be called something "outrageous", maybe that