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12/24/2023
Wow! December seems to have gotten away from me, so I'll have to play catch up by way of photos…
Not necessarily golden…
I read on the local Vietnamese news webpage that Ha Noi ranks 5th worst in the world for air pollution during the winter months! In fact as write this entry, https://www.iqair.com/vietnam/hanoi which monitors air quality is rating Ha Noi as: “Unhealthy -US AQI 160 PM2.5 concentration in Hanoi is currently14.4 times the WHO annual air quality guideline value”. The ratings are:
Good
Moderate
Unhealthy for sensitive groups
Unhealthy
Very unhealthy
Hazardous
The worse I have noted air quality to be (about the time I read the news release) is “Very Unhealthy” and PM2.5 concentration was a whopping 24 times the WHO guideline and it danced around that mark for a week.
Most articles I've read credit three sources for the horrible particulate matter levels: 1) motorbikes and cars, 2) burning charcoal, and 3) burning waste materials. Regarding charcoal, street food restaurants cook meat on open fires using charcoal. I can't tell you how many tens of thousand street restaurants operate morning, noon, and night in a city of 6 million people. Other contributing factors include agricultural burning, incense/paper offerings, and on humid days, fog hangs over the city limiting air currents and restricting the diffusion of pollutants.
Funny thing. I brought some of my leftover COVID 19 NIOSH-approved N95 masks with me from the States thinking I would wear them should the ol' COVID rear its ugly head again. Just goes to show you plans can, and do, change.
On the positive side, all the particulate matter in the air can make for beautiful golden sunsets as seen in the picture above.