A quick science & geography lesson about the haze

Hello everyone, time for a science and geography lesson about the current hazy season. Now one of my regular readers Chin Lam Toh is undoubtedly a very intelligent, well-educated adult but some of his misconceptions about the haze has prompted this lesson. Now please don't get me wrong, this is by no means a personal attack on him - we really have a very good blogger-reader relationship but I would just like to address some of his misconceptions about the haze. Let's begin with what he wrote: Actually the haze doesn't bother me, I still jog in the middle of the day & never wear mask. There are tons of other pollutants in the air we breathe anyway; if this doesn't kill us, something else will. My philosophy is that the particles in the haze are bits of dead trees; anything that was once organic & alive, can integrate within our body more easily than say, artificial chemicals (I very "au naturel" one)! So just embrace the haze, don't agonize over it, treat those dead forests as your friends, we are all one, let them be a part of you.

Well, I'm afraid it is not so simple. Far from it. Whilst there are pollutants in the air you breathe everyday, there are quite nasty, toxic elements in the haze that are produced from the burning of the forests in Indonesia - it takes pollution to a whole new level in terms compared to the local pollution produced in Singapore by traffic, industry etc. I'm afraid your philosophy is misguided at best (or based on misplaced optimism) - you're not just talking about bits of dead trees, you're talking about fires that consume anything and everything that gets in the path of the fire, some of them are deliberately created by farmers clearing forests, but some are also wild fires which are common during the dry season in Indonesia. I would like to refer you to a photo I took in Indonesia recently, in Tanjung Pinang, on Bintan:

An Indonesian forest - note the rubbish all around!

That is Tanjung Pinang airport in the distance, the photo was taken from the top of a hill near my hotel. I actually trekked halfway down the hill because I thought I saw something that looked like edible fruit on a tree but I was mistaken, those were just some leaves they were red but from where I was standing, they looked like fruit. Can you see just how much rubbish there is on this hillside? It was just as full of rubbish halfway down the hill. When you think of Indonesian rainforests, I hope you will bear the photo above in mind rather than any kind pristine, green, unspoiled tropical paradise. In Indonesia, you are never too far from human populations and wherever there are humans, there will be rubbish produced - anyone who has been to Indonesia will tell you that it is not clean and neat like Singapore, rubbish often just piles up at the side of the road and it accumulates wherever the wind and/or the rain takes it. Rubbish collection in rural areas (where the forests are) is non-existent. Plastic water bottles are such a common sight since you can't drink tap water in Indonesia - and then there are the plastic bags, zillions of plastic bags everywhere.

The haze affecting Singapore is a result of the forest fires on the island of Sumatra. Now class, do you know what the population of Sumatra is? In 2015, there are about 55 million people living in this very crowded island. Let's compare that to Peninsular Malaysia (excluding East Malaysia) - there are only 22.5 million people living in Peninsular Malaysia (that's just half of the population of Sumatra). Heck, throw in Sabah and Sarawak and the population of Malaysia is still only 28.3 million - that's still nowhere near the 55 million on the island of Sumatra alone. Here's the punchline: when we're talking about Sumatra, please don't think about an empty island covered by pristine, green, virgin rainforests; hell no, we're talking about quite a densely populated island. It is currently the world's fourth most populated island (after Java, Honshu and Britain - but it will overtake Britain soon given the population growth rate). This means that when the forests are burning, a lot of crap generated by Sumatra's 55 million inhabitants also burns along with it. Do you know what kind of nasty cancer-causing toxic wastes are generated when plastic bottles are being burnt? 

Do you know what is in the haze?

But wait, it gets worse. Much, much worse. In Prince Edward Island, Canada, it is against the law to burn plastics and rubber in your backyard. That's right, the burning of plastics is so toxic and dangerous that it is against the law to do so at home. Allow me to quote from the PEI government website: "Burning plastic or rubber can be dangerous to you, your neighbours, and the environment. Old barrels or wood stoves do not reach high enough temperatures to destroy many of the dangerous chemicals created when plastic burns. These include dioxins and furans. Studies have linked dioxins and furans to cancer and respiratory disease. As well, the ash produced from burning material that contains plastic and rubber could be hazardous. This cannot be spread on the soil or dumped in your waste bin." Plastic and rubber wastes are burnt at municipal solid waste incinerators because "like the double chambered incinerators at the Energy from Waste Plant (in Charlottetown), can reach a temperature of 1,800 °F (982 °C). This is hot enough to destroy dangerous chemicals created when plastic burns. As a result they are allowed to burn plastic and rubber material, but only with a valid air quality permit."

Incinerating plastic wastes like plastic bottles in a Canadian-standard incinerator is quite different from the way plastic bottles (and other plastic wastes) are burnt when they get caught up in an Indonesian forest fire - the temperatures are simply not high enough to destroy dangerous chemicals created when plastic burns (such as carcinogenic dioxins, furans etc) - thus the smoke created from these Indonesian forest fires are far more toxic than the smoke produced from your Canadian-standard incinerator because of the inefficient burning of these toxic materials and far more dangerous for your health. Even the inefficient burning of wood (in the cast of the forest fires) creates so much black smoke, all of which are hazardous for your health. And when you have so many forest fires going on simultaneously all over Sumatra, that creates a nightmare situation where you get a different toxic cocktail of dangerous, cancer-causing smoky wastes drifting over in the haze. Breathing in the toxic hazy air is definitely increasing your chances of getting cancer in the long run - these are long-term health risks that many people neglect. So even if you are not really suffering from any of the short-term effects of the haze, your health is still being affected in the long run if you are breathing this kind of toxic air even for a few weeks a year (and no, drinking more water isn't going to do shit to help).

In hazy Singapore.

But wait - it gets even worse, a lot worse. A large part of the problem is due to the fact that these forests are being cleared for palm oil plantations, so after the big trees are felled for timber, what is left is scrub land with smaller trees.  So what the locals do is pour all kinds of oil from petrol to diesel to kerosene to start the fire, so it will actually burn. It is not easy to get a living tree alight (the water content makes it hard to burn easily), that is why the people trying to burn down these forests need these fuels as fire lighters to actually get the fire going - the result is that you're just not burning wood, but a very dirty mix of petrol, kerosene, diesel, plastics, rubbish and wood. Now that's a lot of very nasty, poisonous crap in there which is anything but "au naturel"; if you saw what actually goes on in these forest fires in Indonesia, you would be absolutely horrified at what goes into it and the kind of noxious fumes produced.

As for what Chin Lam Toh claimed, "My philosophy is that the particles in the haze are bits of dead trees; anything that was once organic & alive, can integrate within our body more easily than say, artificial chemicals".  Oh dear. No. No. No. Your philosophy is not based on science and wrong in so many ways. Come on, where is the science behind your logic?! Firstly, what is being burnt is a mix of organic material (trees) and inorganic crap (plastic wastes, diesel, kerosene, petrol etc) and the chemical reactions that happen during the inefficient burning process creates so many poisonous, hazardous, cancer-causing chemicals that you don't want any of that crap anywhere near any part of your body. No it will not "integrate within our body more easily" - it will accumulate in your lungs (since a lot of these PM 2.5 particles are not water soluble) and eventually give you cancer. And no, once they are stuck there, there's really nothing you can do to clean your lungs out to get rid of the carcinogenic crap that is in your lungs. It's a pretty horrible situation for those in Singapore and Malaysia at the moment who are suffering this through no fault of their own, because the Indonesian government doesn't give a crap about what happens.

If you knew just how hazardous, toxic, poisonous and nasty some of the chemicals in the haze can be, I wonder if people like Chin Lam Toh would still go jogging in the haze? After all, any positive benefits of the exercise are far outweighed by the fact that he is breathing a lot more heavily during the jogging and you are inhaling a lot more of this extremely toxic, hazardous gas full of nasty cancer-causing chemicals created from the process of inefficient burning. This is more than likely to lead to sore throats, wheezing and coughing as a direct result of breathing in so much more toxic hazy air. It doesn't take a chemistry or physics expert to understand the effects of inefficient burning - there is a very good reason why it is illegal to do so in places like Canada, where the government actually gives a damn about the environment and the health of the citizens. The more you learn about the science behind the haze, the more depressing it is because there is no good news, there are no simple solution and this happens year after year without fail. The only real solution is to leave Singapore and go live in a country where air pollution is not a problem at all.

So that's the science and geography lesson for today. I'm afraid it's bad news, very bad news. Heck, if you Singaporeans actually bothered to do a bit of research into the physics, chemistry, geography and medical science behind the haze, you certainly would not say things like "drink more water" and you certainly would not go jogging in the haze. I'm sorry to have to be the bearer of bad news, but there you go, that's why I blog. Let me leave you with just one piece of news: the haze may be a thing of the past by around 2035 - according to this report, at the current rate of deforestation, the Sumatran rainforests will be gone in about 20 years. Then there will be nothing left to burn: sad but true.  That's going to bring little comfort to all affected by the haze today though. Many thanks for reading.