Air Pollution
Police commander suggests people in Bangkok work at home once a week to reduce vehicle emissions

While air pollution in Bangkok has largely been linked to field crop burning in the North, deputy commander of the Royal Thai Police, Damrongsak Kittipraphat, suggests those in the city work from home once a week to keep pollution levels down.
Damrongsak says that if people stay at home like they did during the lockdown, it could help reduce vehicle emissions and improve the city’s air quality. But many have dismissed his idea, saying Bangkok’s haze is from crop burning in other provinces.
This week, the air pollutant PM2.5 reached what’s considered “unhealthy” levels, exceeding the government’s safe threshold of 50 micrograms per cubic metre. PM2.5 levels in Bangkok began to rise last month as farmers burned sugar cane fields in the North, getting ready to harvest their crops, according to the Centre for Air Pollution Mitigation.
While a haze from field crop burning drifts down to Bangkok, the Royal Thai Police in the city are doing what they can locally to cut down PM2.5 levels. Damrongsak says the police have set up 20 checkpoints to check vehicles for black smoke emissions. (Doesn’t look like they’ve cracked down on those old city buses.)
SOURCES: Thai Visa | Bangkok Post
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Bangkok
Owners of vehicles emitting black smoke to be fined up to 5,000 baht

Owners of cars and trucks emitting an excessive amount of black smoke face a fine up to 5,000 baht. The heavy fine is an attempt to reduce air pollution in Bangkok. Along with the fine, the Department of Land Transport will also order the vehicle be suspended from use until its emission system is fixed.
According to the department, from October last year until January, 689,333 vehicles in Bangkok areas have been inspected for black smoke emissions, while 8,762 of them have been suspended from usage. Those vehicles emitting a high volume of smoke, but are under the safety standard, will receive warnings and owners are urged to check vehicle conditions and keep proper maintenance.
Vehicles with exceeding black smoke are urged to check their vehicles at the department’s certified vehicle inspection centres located around Bangkok’s outskirts, including Phutthamonthon, Romklao, and Khlong Luang areas. Motorists are also encouraged to help reduce air pollution caused by black smoke and PM2.5 particles by having their vehicles regularly serviced or alternately switching to electric or NGV-powered vehicles.
People who witness vehicles emitting black smoke can also report the authorities by calling 1584, or contact Line: @1584DLT, or via DLT GPS mobile application.
SOURCE: Nation Thailand
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Air Pollution
Stop the burn – Thai Governors told to stop farmers burning off agricultural waste

Provincial governors in Thailand’s farming areas are being told to mitigate the burning off of agri-business waste by farmers in their provinces. The annual burn-offs are the biggest cause of the December to April air pollution in Bangkok and Central Thailand which lie in the wake of the light north-easterly breezes this time of the year. The burn-offs partly co-incide with the lighter annual north-easterly monsoons.
Lt-Gen Kongcheep Tantravanich, a spokesman for Deputy PM Prawit Wongsuwan, has been one of the first to openly admit that the agri-fires are the common denominator in the capital’s annual smog woes. Over recent decades Bangkok’s Pollution Control department has trotted out any number of PR stunts, including water-spraying drones and asking temples to stop lighting josh sticks.
Now that spokesperson says that the accumulation of PM2.5 micron dust in the atmosphere… “mainly caused by outdoor burning of waste, especially on farms, combined with poor air circulation, has been posing a health risk for the past several days”.
Deputy PM Prawit has now ordered all provincial governors to send teams to warn farmers to stop the burning or face prosecution. It’s not the first order from the top directed at farmers trying to find cheap ways to get rid of agri-waste and prepare their plantations for the next crop. But, despite the ‘warnings’ in the past the practice has continued largely unenforced.
Thai farmers conduct the burn-off activities to reduce the amount of leftover materials – biowaste – like stalk tops, leaves and refuse left after the harvesting. Rice farmers also routinely burn rice stubble – the residual plant waste to prepare fields for the next season of crops.
Around 70-75% of Thailand’s sugar production is sent overseas and the country ranks second in exports just behind Brazil. It’s a big industry. The government also introduced a quota, distribution and price support system between growers and millers which has helped to artificially keep a ceiling on the export prices. Most of Thailand’s sugarcane plantations are in the Central and Northeast regions, some of them, evidenced by the fire maps, are less than 100 kilometres north of the capital.
But the Natural Resources and Environment Minister Woravut Silpaarcha is resorting to the old government narrative, repeating that officials at the Pollution Control Department will have to coordinate with the Interior Ministry and the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration to “intensify efforts to reduce emissions of PM2.5 dust from vehicles and factories”.
He’s also suggested that companies should allow employees to work from home to reduce the amount of vehicles on the city’s roads.
The Pollution Control Department is now estimating that the biomass burn-off contribution to the PM2.5 levels could vary between 24 – 38%, with the majority of it coming from sugarcane and rice burning. Most of the concentrations of agri-burning is around Northern Thailand and in the farmlands north of Bangkok. These areas also suffer considerably from the direct effects of the smoke. Fire maps also indicate that an even worse problem exists in northern Cambodia and north-west Myanmar where the burning carries on un-abated.
GRAPHICS: firms2.modaps
The Thaiger has waged a long campaign to provide fire maps and air-pollution readings over the past 3 years as evidence of the contribution of the agri-burning to Bangkok’s annual smog problem. But officials have kept beating the same drum, blaming factories, vehicle traffic and old diesel buses (which certainly need to be regulated as well but are not the main cause of the December to April haze and smog).
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Bangkok
Smog across Bangkok can be blamed on a ‘Dust Dome’ of pollutants

Poor air quality across Bangkok in the past week are not just caused by the PM2.5 dust. We can blame a ‘dust dome’ that is formed with low atmospheric pressure, dust and pollutants from the farmland waste burning, and greenhouse gases.
Natural Resources and Environment Minister Varawut Silpa-archa says that the pollutants come from “the improper disposal” of farming waste around Bangkok’s northern outskirts. He also asked provincial governors to ask farmers to avoid burring farm waste. If they refuse to cooperate, there might be an order to ban all outdoor burning activities in the future, while suggesting that farmers should sell their agricultural waste instead of burning it.
The mentioning of the agricultural sector being major contributors to Bangkok’s smog problems is a rare official recognition of the pollution ‘elephant in the room’.
People in Bangkok are also being encouraged to avoid outdoor activities and wear their masks when going outside to prevent both the pollutants and Covid-19. While “unhealthy level” of PM2.5 has been reported in many areas over the past week, the Department of Pollution Control is considering both short-term and long-term measures to tackle the air pollution problems.
Measures that have been rolled out include an extension of the work-from-home policy, lowering the price of low sulphur fuel in the capital and its vicinity, extensive monitoring of waste burning on farms, as well as offering higher prices for sugarcane products which were made in a sustainable manner.
For a long-term plan, the department is considering setting a new standard of air quality by lowering the “safe” threshold for PM2.5 exposure below the current level, but this is likely to happen in the next 5 years. Also, the government aims to apply the Euro-5 standard for vehicle emissions by 2024.
He also says that the pollution situation in Thailand has seen improvement after the measures were implemented. And, the number of days where [air quality] exceeded safe standards was less than 20% of the year.
SOURCE: Bangkok Post
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J West
Thursday, December 17, 2020 at 1:06 pm
Excellent proposal, except 99% of Bangkokians are not elite technology workers empowered to work from home.
Preesy Chepuce
Thursday, December 17, 2020 at 2:17 pm
The question is what is most traffic comprised of? Taxis? Mopeds? Lorries? Buses? Private Cars? How much air pollution is from factories? What effect does all the aircon and heatsink and lack of wind have on the situation? Perhaps there needs to be more radical ideas about greening the city?
Issan John
Thursday, December 17, 2020 at 2:21 pm
Maybe they could “crack down” on factory emissions. I live up in the hills, generally above the smog, but when it’s sugar cane season (just starting) the local sugar cane factory belches out enough smoke so that you can barely see the town 10 kms away.
… and locally they haven’t started burning the sugar cane fields yet, and only started cutting cane last week, so I’ve got some doubts about how much the burning is to blame in Bangkok, although it has a noticeable effect locally….
B.T.
Thursday, December 17, 2020 at 2:53 pm
Why not The police commander move his arse and enforce the law. In this case go after farmers and factories. Or conflict of interest again?
Toby Andrews
Thursday, December 17, 2020 at 4:13 pm
They are still not treating this continuing problem seriously enough.
If they want tourists, this foul sir will deter the tourists . . .
Manu
Thursday, December 17, 2020 at 5:54 pm
“last month” was also the end of the rain season so less rain would explain the rise of air pollution since rain washes away polluants (in Europe, pollution peaks in all cities are always in the summer). The last few months, pollution in BBK was actually not so bad.
This policeman’s idea is not sutpid at all, every little helps, I am pretty sure that it could be more than 1% as J West suggests above. But on its own, it is obviously pointless. Greener public transports (replacing the old stinky buses), more skytrain lines. Decisions and investements are in the hands of politicians…
And why not, closing traffic one or two sundays a month on some busy roads on big chunks of Downtown Bangkok? I bet during the curfew months, so therefore empty streets, did help to reduce pollution a lot.
Kevin
Friday, December 18, 2020 at 1:23 pm
Yes Thailand has an agricultural burning problem and the brick factories have literally driven my wife and I from our home. But I don’t understand why the Thai government doesn’t talk about being stuck right in the middle of the top 3 air polluters on the planet. The amount of cross-border air pollution from China, India, and Indonesia is staggering and something that is completely unmanageable. When the air blows in from the north-east like it has been all of that industrial pollution and PM 2.5 from China enters Thailand without a passport or visa. It makes us just as sick as our own pollution does.