Bangkok Issues Work From Home Order Due to PM2.5 Air Pollution

As Bangkok’s air pollution worsens, authorities have urged residents to work from home and wear respirator masks outside. Bangkok governor Chadchart Sittipunt said in a statement on Tuesday that residents should work from home if possible, or switch from personal vehicles to public transportation options if they must commute.

Authorities will seek to control activities that generate dust particles, such as outdoor burning, construction, and truck engine combustion, he added.

Since the weekend, air quality in the capital has been mostly unhealthy, with authorities warning that hazardous dust particles known as PM2.5 may exceed safe levels again later this week. According to AirVisual’s IQAir monitoring tool, the city’s air quality was moderate on Wednesday morning but is expected to deteriorate to unhealthy levels by Thursday.

In recent years, Bangkok and other Thai cities have struggled with poor air quality, with pollution worsening during the dry season, which lasts from December to February.

Mr Chadchart stated that authorities will “intensively monitor” Bangkok’s pollution levels from now until the end of February. For the time being, he said, schools in the city should remain open as usual.

According to official data, some cities in the northern region and those near Bangkok had poor air quality on Wednesday morning. According to the Ministry of Public Health, Bangkok and 23 other provinces are among the cities with high levels of PM2.5.

According to Opas Karnkawinpong, the ministry’s permanent secretary, health authorities in all 77 provinces will closely monitor PM2.5 levels and will open emergency operations centres in any province where unhealthy readings persist for more than three days.

Patients with pollution-related diseases in local hospitals have nearly doubled to nearly 213,000 this week, up from about 96,000 last week, according to Dr. Opas.

PM2.5 Air Pollution

Every year, millions of people die prematurely as a result of diseases and cancer caused by air pollution. Ambient air quality standards are the first line of defence against this carnage.

Nonetheless, according to McGill University researchers, more than half of the world’s population does not have access to adequate air quality standards.

The researchers concentrated on PM2.5 air pollution, which is responsible for an estimated 4.2 million premature deaths worldwide each year. Over a million people have died in China, over 500,000 in India, nearly 200,000 in Europe, and over 50,000 in the United States.

Among the various types of air pollution, PM2.5 is the most lethal. It is made up of particles smaller than 2.5 microns in size – so small that billions of them can fit inside a red blood cell.

Millions of preventable deaths

“We took unprecedented measures to protect people from COVID-19, but we still don’t do enough to avoid the millions of preventable deaths caused by air pollution every year,” says Yevgen Nazarenko, a Research Associate at McGill University who co-authored the study with Devendra Pal and worked under Professor Ariya’s supervision.

The researchers discovered that even where there is protection, standards are frequently far below what the World Health Organization considers safe. Many of the most polluted regions, such as the Middle East, do not even measure PM2.5 air pollution.

They also discovered that the weakest air quality standards are frequently violated, particularly in China and India.

Surprisingly, the researchers discovered that high population density is not always a barrier to successfully combating air pollution. Several jurisdictions with densely populated areas have been successful in establishing and enforcing stringent standards. Japan, Taiwan, and Singapore were among them.

According to the findings, more than half of the world requires immediate protection in the form of adequate PM2.5 ambient air quality standards.

Implementing these standards everywhere will save countless lives. Where standards are already in place, they should be globally harmonized.

Even in developed countries, we must do more to clean up our air in order to save hundreds of thousands of lives each year.