October 4, 2019, By Vietnam Weekly
Last week I opened by discussing air pollution in Hanoi and Saigon, and that's been the major story this week as well. (Expect the East Sea to return to the headlines next week, if this is any indication.) Hanoi's AQI reading, which measures air pollutants based on the U.S. Air Quality Index value, topped 300 at times, well into hazardous territory (for those unfamiliar with AQI, New York City's current reading is 22 by way of comparison). For example, here's what it looked like on Monday morning:
At first, officials in Hanoi tried to explain the problem away, blaming weather patterns or claiming that the reading is bad because one of the monitoring stations is near a busy intersection (nevermind the fact that the AirVisual app showed terrible readings throughout the city). Residents are not happy, and VnExpress reports that AirVisual was one of the most-downloaded apps in the country this week. Incredibly, Hanoi had the worst AQI out of the 92 global cities covered by the app multiple times.
The government has since said that pollution is at its worst levels in five years, while schools are cancelling outdoor activities and officials have advised people to remain indoors as much as possible. The burning of post-harvest fields around the capital has only exacerbated the problem, while Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has called on the leaders of Hanoi and Saigon to seriously tackle air pollution. Saigon has been bad as well, though not to the same extent as Hanoi.
If such poor air quality continues, this presents a real problem for the government, as it impacts everyone on a daily basis. (VnExpress has a good piece on this.) Through explanations such as those mentioned above, some officials continue to show that they don't understand how much information people have access to through the internet. I remember reading about China forcing factories to close during periods of heavy pollution in the past, and I can't see leaders here - eager as they are to welcome investment and be seen as business-friendly - doing the same. If anything, I could see this accelerating plans to limit motorbikes, which would be fine if either city had anything resembling an effective mass transit system (see below). As I write this, Hanoi's AQI is at 55 thanks to morning rain, but Thao Dien in Saigon is sitting at an unhealthy 167.
I was in Bangkok last weekend (third-highest AQI in the world on Monday), and this is what it looked like when we took off to return to Vietnam.
Safe to say that this isn't Vietnam's problem alone.
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