AsianScientist (Oct. 2, 2015) – You’re tuning in to hourly updates of the Pollutant Standards Index (PSI) on a smartphone app, schools are closed and N95 masks are out of stock. These are just a few signs that the haze has returned to Southeast Asia.
While people living in the region may have begun to resign themselves to the inevitability of this yearly event, meteorologists and pulmonologists haven’t given up. Instead, they are working furiously on ways to reduce its detrimental effects on both the environment and on our health.
Not all of us may be scientists, but here are eight must-know facts about the haze, backed by science.
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#1 The main cause? Burning of drained peatland.
Peatlands are waterlogged land that consist of decaying plant matter 20 meters deep into the ground. About 14 percent of Indonesia’s land is peatland. Most peatlands are resistant to fire due to the moisture that is trapped in the land. However, deforestation and peatland drainage for agriculture has generated dry peatland, which burns like coal during clearing and fertilization. These conditions give rise to smoky, hazy air that is carried by the wind across Southeast Asia. Furthermore, as the peats run deep into the land, such forest fires are difficult to put out.
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Source: Asian Scientist Magazine; Cover Photo: Soham Banerjee/Flickr/CC.
