YOURSAY | ‘Malaysia has so many things to hide - from 1MDB to pollutant index.’

Why is API so low when it's a post-apocalypse movie outside?

Negarawan: After many years of haze, the failure of developing and adopting a common standard of air quality measurement is yet another sign of the failure of Asean.

Year after year, we keep on hearing the same complaints from countries affected by the haze, but yet Indonesia is not compelled to do anything concrete.

Indonesia legally allows smallholders to clear their plantation land by burning, and the large plantation companies conveniently put the blame on smallholders for starting the fires. Local Indonesian authorities are said to be corrupt and their enforcement activities are ineffective.

It is time for affected countries like Malaysia and Singapore to take legal action against Indonesia outside of the Asean framework, in view of the large financial losses suffered by the tourism, air transport, and other sectors that are required to close down their operations due to health and safety hazard.

This includes the large medical expenses that people have to incur due to respiratory illnesses.

Abasir: Why don't the Air Pollutant Index (API) readings reflect the filthy air outside?

For the same reasons we are told the economy and its fundamentals are okay, 1MDB is sound, PM Najib Abdul Razak is a highly respected national leader and Rosmah Mansor a simple housewife.

Snake-in-the-Grass: We could train your sniffer dogs and check its wet teary eyes for degree of API, or get the API coconut-man to use his incredible methods to detect haze.

Or simply use our Visibility Index - our eyes can see how bad everything is. But then again, we do have many ‘blind’ people around.

Mosquitobrain: Malaysia has so many things to hide - from 1MDB to pollutant index. All at the expense of people. Poor souls.

Just Your Normal Rakyat: This has been happening for many years. If our Department of Environment (DOE) is aware of the shortcomings with regard to the API readings, why don't they correct it?

They can still use whatever standards that they are using now, but add in more readings, for example, four hours weighted average so that a more suitable announcement and accurate actions can be taken.

If need be, we can add in other air condition monitoring instruments which need not be highly sophisticated or expensive.

Arosh: Good explanation, writer Koh Jun Lin, but I have another view.

Given the current constraints, why not also report the median range, together with the mean, so that a simple picture is available to the public at large that can be easily understood.

I agree also we should measure PM2.5, even if we have 12 stations - some data is better than no data, so why wait till 2017?

The other issue is that, what is the correlation of PM10 and incidents of increased respiratory illnesses for the chronic sufferers? The Health Ministry and the DOE had 10 years to do a study with help from some local universities. Was it ever done and published?

It is always easier just using the United Nations standard and say “all is well”, but local conditions of air environmental quality differ. We should just stop relying on others and do our own 'homework'. You want to be a high income and technology nation, that's what you do.

Wira: Show some ingenuity, DOE. Please give six-hour moving averages instead of 24. This is a better indication whether we should continue to stay indoor.

The writer failed to mention that the reason why we were not using the PM2.5 standard was that not all our equipment could measure to 2.5 micron air particulate.

Why don't Umno donate some money from that RM2.6 billion to Malaysia so that we might buy new PM2.5 equipment?

Gggg: At one point of time the API reading was not made public and those using their own equipment had some problem to conduct their own readings. Anyone remember this?

Righteous: The haze I can tolerate but not the ‘Haze’ thrown out by Umno over the 1MDB and Middle East ‘donation’.

Indonesia may emulate us to get ‘donations’ from the Middle East to fight, not IS, but ‘Hazis’. Cough, cough, throat lozenges, please.

Met Dept denies using strong chemicals for cloud seeding

Daniel: How many times can you cloud seed? How effective is it in removing the suspended haze particles? How large an area can you cloud seed compared to the hundreds of square kilometres the haze occurs?

A natural occurring showers lasting 30 minutes barely improves the haze situation before it is back within 10 minutes after the rain stops.

Why try to play God and waste resources when it does next to nothing to improve the haze situation?

Hcleong: I think we must be fair to the director-general of the Meteorological Department, Che Gayah Ismail. It is proven cloud seeding does help. We cannot hammer every government official blindly.

Thanks to her clarification as it clears our doubts, too. It is those mischievous people who circulated fake news who need to be hauled up.

Fair&Just: How to believe in the government when the head of government has zero credibility?

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