It's unfortunate that this is something that happens here at all, I will admit that. At the same time though I truly believe that this makes the news every year so that someone out there can redirect attention towards themselves and score a few internet point for the sort of people that this is important to.
For me, since I try to keep a very low profile when it comes to all things online, I rarely ever even talk about it unless it is to point out the exaggerations of the endless amount of people that are posting about it as if their experience was unique or even true for that matter.
If you look up almost any publication, public or private about the air quality in Chiang Mai, Thailand, you are going to end up seeing a picture like this one.
First off, this has almost certainly been doctored because I have lived here for over half a decade, walk and ride around the city on a daily basis, and I have never seen anything even remotely like this.
There are a lot of tricksters in the world right now, and with the widespread use of AI I question whether or not this was ever actually a picture at all that was taken by someone.
Is there a haze in the sky on some days? Well sure there is. Is the air quality worse than in the meadows of rural Switzerland.. yup!
But I get kind of sick and tired of people blowing this up as if it was some sort of humanitarian crisis that the entire world better get involved in straight away or there is going to be mass deaths or something like that.
Here is the AQI stats for Chiang Mai as of right now and those scary red numbers are the really bad ones. My favorite one in this is a figure that just 5 blocks away has a wonderfully pleasant AQI right next to super doom-and-gloom area that you could probably see from both points.
I chose a few other cities in SE Asia for comparison based on similar population.
Songkla, Thailand... average AQI 155
Zibo, China average AQI 58 (Well done China! Is this true though? )
Jakarta, Indonesia average AQI 110
I could go on and on but basically no matter what city you look at in any developing country, the AQI is in the "yellow" or "red" areas and those places don't even have an annual crop burn to contend with.
The people posting these doomsday pictures online get under my skin because they aren't offering up any sort of solution, all they do is bitch and moan and try to garner sympathy from their followers or family and friends. In the meantime I wander around this city on a daily basis and barely even notice it.
I do find these contraptions to be kind of amusing because I can't really imagine that they accomplish much other than to give tourist some sense of the government actually giving a crap about them. Mostly you just end up damp if you are in the area where these modified ski-resort snow-making machines throw tiny droplets of water all over the place.
For someone that has some extreme sensitivity to air quality of course Chiang Mai would be a terrible place for them to be. One of my friends has such a disorder and he moved away for this reason. Fair enough but in my mind it would be like someone who has a severe peanut allergy moving away from an elementary school that serves PB&J sandwiches every day. You shouldn't have been there in the first place.
Those of us that actually live in Chiang Mai just kind of take this in stride and if you want, buy one of those air purifiers and a "95 mask" that actually removes particles from the air. I get annoyed when I see certain groups that are handing out free dental hygenist masks that don't filter out a damn thing and all it is accomplishing is free advertising for whoever made the masks. You look like a jackass and you aren't helping yourself at all.
The news and the relatively idiotic "hey look at me!" social media people give this area an undeserved bad name.
I've said it many times before in response to the environmental nutjobs out there. There is no way to resolve this issue unless you holier-than-thou billionaires are going to provide the farmers with the super expensive machines that accomplish the same job as controlled burns.
In the meantime I think we would all benefit from people being just a little bit less of a liar when it comes to presenting a certain place on the earth that is actually a really lovely place to live and visit.