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The Smoke Is Here


sunholidaysun1

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We have thunder in Phaya Mengrai and I am hoping for rain soon.

Hope you do. If you ahve some should drop the smoke more than if it is just localised as I fear. Still raining quite heavily here witth strong winds.

Edited by harrry
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It always amazes me when health nuts pull out the baccy and roll up while they warn you about eating a piece of toast and marmite like mum and dad did until they died in their nineties.

Does tobacco smoke have PM10s in it? If it does a lung air test would measure about 6000!

So out of interest how many smokers here?

Edited by cheeryble
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It always amazes me when health nuts pull out the baccy and roll up while they warn you about eating a piece of toast and marmite like mum and dad did until they died in their nineties. Does tobacco smoke have PM10s in it? If it does a lung air test would measure about 6000! So out of interest how many smokers here?

The logic is correct, it's the detail that's the problem:

PM10 refers to particulate matter that is smaller than 10 microns in diameter, yes, ciggerette smoke does contain PM10 and even PM2.5 however the composition of the matter contained in ciggerette smoke differs from that found in the polluted Chiang Mai air. Whilst there's lots of harmful stuff in cigerettes the ingredients are at least controlled, the composition of the polluted air however contains a far more extensive list of nasties and the contents are not controlled at all. Conclusion: whilst smoking fags is bad for your health, at least you are not inhaling the residue from burned plastic bags, polystyrene etc which is the case currently with the general pollution.

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We have thunder in Phaya Mengrai and I am hoping for rain soon.

Hope you do. If you ahve some should drop the smoke more than if it is just localised as I fear. Still raining quite heavily here witth strong winds.

Very heavy Hailstone storm at about 6.30pm and had about 1 inch of hail in the back of my ute. Had a good heavy down pour of rain as well. Went to Chiangmai on Friday and the smog was about half of what we have here. Driving back yesterday you can see it start to get worse from Wang Pa Pow right to home.

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It always amazes me when health nuts pull out the baccy and roll up while they warn you about eating a piece of toast and marmite like mum and dad did until they died in their nineties. Does tobacco smoke have PM10s in it? If it does a lung air test would measure about 6000! So out of interest how many smokers here?

The logic is correct, it's the detail that's the problem:

PM10 refers to particulate matter that is smaller than 10 microns in diameter, yes, ciggerette smoke does contain PM10 and even PM2.5 however the composition of the matter contained in ciggerette smoke differs from that found in the polluted Chiang Mai air. Whilst there's lots of harmful stuff in cigerettes the ingredients are at least controlled, the composition of the polluted air however contains a far more extensive list of nasties and the contents are not controlled at all. Conclusion: whilst smoking fags is bad for your health, at least you are not inhaling the residue from burned plastic bags, polystyrene etc which is the case currently with the general pollution.

Thankyou for the comment.

However my best guess is, apart from in.highly localised situations, that it's vegetable matter which comprises 99.999 + parts of this smoke,

Which, bearing in mind how so very very much denser and more persistently year round tobacco (or marijuana) smoke is, begs a comparison of some sort.

For example, it comes to mind that if you have say a ten or twenty percent chance of serious lung disease from smoking (a guess), then you should divide that by at least 6 as smoking is all year round, then divide that reduced figure by somewhere between ten and a hundred as tobacco smoke is going to be so very much denser.

IOW a quick stab is between a 1/6000 and 1/300 chance of serious lung disease from air pollution.

Oh! This is forgetting that most of us have lived many decades in cleaner air environments so less time for damage again compared to smokers chances they've usually been at it since they were teens so let's divide the figure at the very least by two or three again.

We are now at risk of serious lung disease (increased risk over smoking that is) from spending our later lives in northern Thailand ballpark between 1/1000 and 1/10,000.

This figure may repeat may be drastically reduced as the body may be able to much better handle effects from lower concentrations of smoke and clear or partially them......who knows?

This is just a prima faciae suggestion, and it may ignore the annoyance and sometimes much worse of allergic conditions (though at least you know if you suffer from them and can take steps) ........but it suggests things may not be so bad as they seem.

BTW a mountaineer friend told me that when you look at the mountain and see "smoke", there may be some smoke in your air, but there is for a large part a monsoon haze which obscures the view.......which was there before man ever invented burning.

Who knows how valid that is....but I certainly remember seeing hazes all my life on mountain views at some times of year.

Edited by cheeryble
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A lot of good the rain did! I was so happy when the rains came down so hard yesterday. I thought surly the air will be clear and we can see the beauty of the CR mountains in the morning once again. WRONG!!!! The smoke in the air is still thick enough to cut with a knife. I guess we just have to hope for a series of typhoons to hit our area.

Maybe when the tourists planning to come to the North realize the magnitude of the detrimental air quality they will think better of spending their money here. I think then maybe things will get better. The Thai need to see the impact of their decisions in their wallets to overcome their apathy. Or maybe I am just kidding myself!

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Localized thunderstorms don’t have much of an impact. We really need a regional storm to pass through to move this volume of smoke to someone else’s backyard.

Localized thunderstorms don’t have much of an impact. We really need a regional storm to pass through to move this volume of smoke to someone else’s backyard.

The localised storm at least got the smoke to the level we can have a barbeque in the back yard today....anyone for smoked meat?

Edited by harrry
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Cheerybyte....if you were doing a first year primary school statistic report and wwrote the above it would get the grade F.

Hi Harry thanks for the response proclamation for which you get an A smile.png

Care to suggest what you find implausible in my little initial inquiry into a comparison with cigarette smoking.......or will we just have to guess?

In other words, could you tell us why someone who smoked all his life shouldn't have an enormously higher risk factor than breathing in N Thai air for a month or two a year.

Thanks

ps: do you smoke?

pps: It's Cheeryble as in the wonderful twin Cheeryble Brothers from Nicholas Nickleby, whose kind, friendly and benevolent nature is as real though they came from the nib of Dickens' pen as if Ned and Charles walked through my door as I write this to say hello.

" . . . Natural affections and instincts, my dear sir, are the most beautiful of the Almighty's works, but like other beautiful works of His, they must be reared and fostered, or it is as natural that they should be wholly obscured, and that new feelings should usurp their place, as it is that the sweetest productions of the earth, left untended, should be choked with weeds and briers. I wish we could be brought to consider this, and remembering natural obligations a little more at the right time, talk about them a little less at the wrong one." ~ Charles Cheeryble

Edited by cheeryble
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Well the weather beureau is forecasting four days of rain and as you know they are never wrong. Hope so as this will really clear the smoke and not everyone has an airconditioned room with two HEPA air filters to hide in.

Edited by harrry
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We sure need something. The air is foul today.sad.pngsick.gif

...and getting worse everyday. Rain please, please, please...wai.gif

The way our luck is going we may have to wait until they throw out all the old water at songran and then have a delay until they shoot holes in the sky with those rockets to make it rain again.

Edited by harrry
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People seem to have recovered from their drunken Songkran stupor just enough to go out and light up the nearby hills. Reminds me of lava trails on the slopes of Kilauea in Hawaii. Such a lovely red glow at night. Things were not too bad there for a couple of days but have now returned to normal for this time of year.sad.png

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Smog hell?

I rarely notice it.

I will say this.

I enquired among Thai relatives in Chiang Rai (As there has certainly been a lot of publicbannering against fires from the government).

They seem to all be aware of the burning ban and now lay it at the feet of hill tribes. I asked what happens to the rice fields after harvest and they spoke of making puey.

Maybe things are starting to change?

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Smog hell? I rarely notice it. I will say this. I enquired among Thai relatives in Chiang Rai (As there has certainly been a lot of publicbannering against fires from the government). They seem to all be aware of the burning ban and now lay it at the feet of hill tribes. I asked what happens to the rice fields after harvest and they spoke of making puey. Maybe things are starting to change?

Aware yes but you spelt puey wrong. You should have spelt it "paying to the official". Edited by harrry
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Trying to generalize from localized reports can be misleading. Unlike some communities, there are no hill tribes in our immediate area, so they are not responsible for the fires I witness on a daily basis. Twenty kilometers away on the mountain top, or in the valley on the other side, it is a different story. It all depends on where you are.

From what I have seen, while there may be changes in certain villages, there has yet to develop a changed mindset in the region or culture of Chiang Rai as a whole.

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The burning looks like its started again . A strong smell of smoke now at 2am . With no rain expected for at least a week , some will make the most of it now the holiday period is over. With the very hot and dry weather it makes the burning so much easier .

Well the aqmithai website gives the PM10 at round 230 at 3am so looks as though you were observing pretty well then. This localised report seems true.
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The haze really has two components. Localised smoke blowing in the winds from burns,which are the ones that may have the big chared leaf or soot particles and smoke which has ascended into the atmosphere so that it spreads over a wide area. Meteorological conditions then cause this haze to rise and lower adding to the locally produced haze.

Edited by harrry
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