Haze Conditions Expected To Worsen; Winds Blowing From South Sumatra

It’s just another day in S’pore.

I woke up, put on my specs, and went out; tugging my bag of breakfast and coffee to maximise time efficiency in the mornings.

Ah, damn. Forgot to clean my glasses again today. Silly me! *cleans glasses*

Damn, I’m terrible at wiping my glasses, the blur is not going away.

And then I realised it’s not my specs that’s blurry. It’s the environment.

So here’s the bad news, folks. The haze is expected to worsen.

Air Quality Officially Reached ‘Unhealthy’ Levels

Say what you want about all the 3 letter acronyms about air quality and how the ones S’pore use are different from other countries’ standards.

All these discussions don’t matter cause even the ones we use here (PSI and one-hour PM2.5) also reached the unhealthy level liao… at least for some periods of time.

On 19 Sep 2019, the one-hour PM2.5 reading went from 65-100 micrograms per cubic m at 6 am to 75-118 micrograms per cubic m at 8pm.

The 24-hour PSI went from 97-113 at 6am to 114-135 at 8pm.

A reminder, above 100 is in the ‘unhealthy’ range.

But just because a number on the website says it’s still in the healthy range, it doesn’t mean that people actually living in the haze are living like it’s in the healthy range.

Health And Businesses Affected

According to The NewPaper, Parkway Shenton had more patients coming in for haze-related ailments like itchy eyes, throat discomfort and asthmatic problems.

The Straits Times talked to alfresco restaurants in the CBD, and a 20% estimation of decrease in customers is pretty consistent.

OverEasy, a restaurant in Fullerton Road, had people cancelling their reservations because of high PSI readings, and in the last couple of days had about 20% fewer customers than usual.

Amoy Street Food Centre stall owners also said a 20% decrease in lunch and dinner crowds.

The F1 race is also affected, especially since visibility is a safety factor for both spectators and drivers. Though, the race is still planned to go ahead.

Haze To Continue From South Sumatra

The 19 Sep 2019 update by NEA on the haze situation started off by saying air quality has improved on the day because of winds blowing from the southeast that helped disperse the smoke haze.

In the next few days, the haze situation is expected to get worse as the wind carries the haze from southern Sumatra to here. Moderate to dense smoke haze continue to emit from persistent hotspots.

So… what to do?

As a normal person with no political power or mind control ability to ask people to stop producing the haze, I guess the best I can do is to make good use of this situation.

Make use of the haze to shoot an indie movie in a dystopian setting. Or some kind of horror movie.

Or maybe follow this guy and start a petition to make the Singapore flyer spin faster to blow the haze away.