It’s only been a few months into the year and already our hazy days have been slowly seeping in once again as the 3-hour Pollutant Standards Index (PSI) peaked at 87 yesterday night — the highest yet this year.
Though PSI levels tapered down slightly since the peak, the air quality hasn’t let up, remaining on the high end of ‘moderate’ range since yesterday. According to the World Air Quality Index Project’s real-time calculations, the concentration of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) have even breached into the ‘unhealthy’ range as of writing.
The increased presence of smog here could be attributed to transboundary smoke haze, says the National Environment Agency, with some hotspots detected over Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia on Tuesday.
The more plausible explanation of course would be due to the fact that a state of emergency had been declared in the province of Riau over forest and land fires blazing in Sumatra earlier this month. Yet again, firefighting manpower — including 500 military and police personnel, as well as a water-bombing helicopter — were deployed to fight the peatland fires.
It’s barely been a couple of months since a particularly bad transboundary haze period affected both Malaysia and Singapore, when PM2.5 readings breached as high as 500 late last year. Though it’s far from the days when PSI levels sat at hazardous levels, it is worrisome to know that transboundary haze can reach Singapore so early into 2016.
