News

Reuters/Bangkok Post 26 January 2018 

OSLO: Billions of bits of plastic waste are entangled in corals and sickening reefs from Thailand to Australia's Great Barrier Reef, scientists said on Thursday.

The trash is another pressure on corals, already suffering from over-fishing, rising temperatures caused by climate change and other pollution.

Bangkok Post 26 January 2018 | Apinya Wipatayotin

Residents urged to wear face masks

Bangkok's air pollution which exceeds health safety levels has improved but it could worsen at the end of next month, according to the Department of Pollution Control (DPC).

The New York Times 25 January 2018 | VERONIQUE GREENWOOD  

Joleah Lamb began her career as a coral biologist on the Great Barrier Reef. Every now and then she’d note a scrap of plastic as she swam through. But when she started studying reefs in Asia, she came across a completely different level of detritus.

Futurism 25 January 2018 | Patrick Caughill

The President of France, Emmanuel Macron, has accelerated the timetable for the country to shut down all coal-fired power plants. The move helps to solidify the country's leadership position in the fight against climate change.

Channel News Asia 25 January 2018

The air quality in Thailand's capital of Bangkok has been at unhealthy levels in recent days, said the Pollution Control Department on Thursday (Jan 25).

The Nation 24 January 2018 | Pratch Rujivanarom

The air quality in Bangkok has been extremely unhealthy throughout the week, with the level of particles sized at equal to or smaller than 2.5 microns (PM2.5) reached over 200 micrograms per cubic metre of air.

This is according to the air-quality monitoring website,aqicn.org, which revealed that the Air Quality Index (AQI) gathered by the Pollution Control Department on Wednesday showed that the level of PM2.5 in Bangkok has been well beyond the safe average since Satur

Khaosod English 24 January 2018 | Chayanit Itthipongmaetee

BANGKOK — Don’t be fooled by the grey mass obscuring the city these past few days. It’s not fog.

Children, seniors and people with asthma and respiratory diseases were advised Wednesday to wear masks when they step outside, as parts of metropolitan Bangkok are suffering from unsafe air quality due to an accumulation of smog.

RFA 24 January 2018 

About 100 mostly fishermen from central Vietnam’s Quang Binh Province have held three days of protests over what they say is inadequate compensation for lost livelihoods caused by a toxic waste spill that occurred along the country’s central coast in April 2016, a priest from the village told RFA.

The fishermen from Van Dong village in Quang Hai commune were affected by the spill that polluted more than 125 miles of coastline along four coastal provinces, including Quang Binh, killing an estimated 115 tons of fish and leaving fishermen and tourism industry workers jobless.

The Guardian 24 January 2018 | David Hill

Peru’s Health Ministry found shocking contamination among the Nahua, but hasn’t published its full report

An indigenous people living in one of the remotest parts of the Peruvian Amazon has been struck by a mystery mercury epidemic, according to an unpublished Health Ministry report dated 2015 and 2017 seen by the Guardian.

The Nation 24 January 2018 | Natthawat Laping

Chiang Rai province hopes to implement an outdoor burning ban from February 17 to April 17 and to organise talks with neighbouring Laos and Myanmar to address the problem of cross-border haze pollution caused by the illegal burning of forests and fields.

During the period, besides the strict law enforcement, the authorities want to allocate a budget to have residents in villages at risk of forest fires – in Mae Fa Luang, Mae Suay, Wiang Pa Pao, Phaya Meng Rai and Thoeng districts – help as firebreak-construction volunteers.