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I'm just back from a business trip to Singapore. I never really understood what people meant with "haze" until one evening. From what I heard from my Singaporea
by bkor 11y ago
I'm just back from a business trip to Singapore. I never really understood what people meant with "haze" until one evening. From what I heard from my Singaporean colleagues the haze during my time there was pretty much cleared up.
They have a number to measure how bad it is, they call it "PSI", see e.g. http://www.haze.gov.sg/ http://www.haze.gov.sg/. This is used in multiple countries, though the definition on what number constitutes bad air differs. During my entire stay, the number was 50-100 or so. Keep this in mind.
So my experience: One evening there's like a fog, you can maybe see for 50 meters max. But the fog isn't water particles in the air, it is leftover material from the fire. Meaning: what you're seeing is utterly bad. Most of the time I spend either in the office, restaurant, a bar and public transport (AFAIK not only air conditioned but also filtered air).
I wear contact lenses. Though only spending maybe 30 min in open air max: I got red eyes, had to clean my contact lenses again and had to buy eye drops to fix my red eyes.
The haze was way worse before I arrived there. Only 1.5 day it was really bad. However, you could never see the sky. Just filthiness in the air preventing you from seeing it.
I had it badly with 50-100 of "PSI". Before I was there it was around 300!
Singapore is pretty interesting (fooooood! :-D), but living there will really shorten your life thanks to this.
I never really understood haze until I experienced it myself. It's good to remember that it's not like the fog I am used to. It's like staying in the smoke of a burning building.
- geomark 11y agoHere in Thailand the impact has been pretty severe in the south. Very unhealthy air quality, a number of deaths of elderly from respiratory failure, many dozens of flights cancelled to Phuket and Krabi. Seems a lot worse this year than many years past. Next up is Thailand's burning season in a few months when the people in the north and neighboring Myanmar do their annual burn of farmlands and forest. That's usually pretty bad, too, but not on the same scale as the burning in Indonesia.
- vellum 11y ago>I had it badly with 50-100 of "PSI". Before I was there it was around 300! Kalimantan, where the fires are burning, hit 3300 PSI. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Southeast_Asian_haze https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Southeast_Asian_haze
- hellofunk 11y agoWhen I was there, the PSI peaked at something like 412. A PSI of over 100 is now often considered "normal" which is tragic. I start to notice the air quality degrading at around PSI of 50. When we got back from our Thailand trip to flee the haze in 2013, the leftover remnants of the crisis yielded all our clothes in our closet penetrated with thick black dust.
- 72deluxe 11y agoVery informative thanks! After doing a quick web search, you can play spot the difference in air quality in these pictures: http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/singapore-indonesia-haze-interactive-before-after-photos-show-dramatically-reduced-visibility-1521643 http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/singapore-indonesia-haze-interactiv...