Uni logo: POLLUTION

Friday, 26 August 2016

indonesia, POLLUTION, TOPICS: HAZE, WORLD

The smell of burning is back in Singapore

Posted By: Uni logo - 02:06:00

UPDATE: Aug. 26, 2016, 11:43 a.m. SGT

Updated PSI reading

SINGAPORE — Many in Singapore woke up on Friday to a burning smell.

Social media posts started flooding in with people complaining about the smell and smoggy views over the typically clear city.

According to the National Environment Agency's PM2.5 readings, the air pollution levels started climbing quickly at around 9 a.m., reaching a high of 181 in the western part of the island by 11 a.m.

The NEA regards readings of between 51-100 as "moderate", while 101-200 crosses into the "unhealthy" range.

The PM2.5 measures particles in the air 2.5 micrometres in diameter or smaller, which can be dangerous because they lodge deep inside the lungs.

The smog has for years been a result of deliberate forest burning in Indonesia, although it's not clear yet if we can pin Friday's sudden spike in air pollution on the neighbouring country.

On Thursday, the Indonesian police released data to show it's stepped up arrests made in connection with forest fires, in an effort to demonstrate bigger efforts to stop the burning.

Illegal slash-and-burning has been a perennial problem in Indonesia, where farmers there set their crops ablaze to quickly clear them for new planting. The resulting smog that floats over is also a pain to neighbouring countries like Singapore and Malaysia, which typically complain of thick pollution during this time of year.

Last year, Indonesia tried revving up efforts to clamp down on the burning. It suspended four corporations connected to pulp and paper plantations that were burning crops, and arrested another 70 farmers who owned those plantations.

Indonesia's fires produced so much carbon dioxide in those months that it pushed the country up to fourth in the world of global carbon emitters in 2015. The fires single-handedly tripled the country's annual emissions last year.

Thursday, 19 May 2016

Facebook, FORMOSA PLASTICS, POLLUTION, Social Media, Vietnam

Facebook 'blocked' in Vietnam over weekend to stop protesters from communicating

Posted By: Uni logo - 09:31:00

Vietnamese Facebook users had problems accessing the popular social network over the past weekend, apparently due to an ongoing protest that the government has been trying to suppress.

For the past two weekends in a row, hundreds of people have been protesting in Vietnam's two major cities of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, as well as in smaller cities like Nha Trang, Vung Tau and Da Nang.

The protests were prompted by millions of dead fish washing up on its shores since April — which local media and protesters have blamed on Formosa Plastics, a Taiwanese firm.

Masses of dead fish on a Vietnamese beach in late April, 2016.

Formosa has denied responsibility. Vietnam's environment minister admitted the company had an illegal waste pipe at one of its steel plants in Vietnam, and was ordered to dig it up. He said the pipe hasn't conclusively been linked to the fish deaths, but protesters are seeing red over the firm.

So over the weekend, when protesters were expected to rally for the third time, Facebook was inaccessible to locals, who had been using the platform to organise.

People also had problems accessing Facebook's Instagram service.

Israeli VPN service Hola posted a statement saying it saw a surge of about 200,000 users from Vietnam on its system over the weekend, using it to access Facebook.

Despite the block, rallies still continued, albeit in smaller numbers than in previous weeks, according to blogs. Protesters were also rounded up by the police.

Dead fish continue to float up in the rivers, according to the latest reports. On Tuesday morning, a major canal in Ho Chi Minh City was filled with dead fish. Authorities say 70 metric tons of fishhave been retrieved in the 8.7 km Nhieu Loc–Thi Nghe canal alone so far since April.

The director of the agriculture department, Nguyen Phuoc Trung, told reporters the fish were killed by polluted water in the canal.

But this has happened in 2015 and 2014's May rainy seasons in the polluted canal. Nhieu Loc–Thi Nghe is connected to a sewage system that discharges wastewater into it, and is often stagnant.

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