Haze remains in southern Thailand

THAILAND, August 14 (TNA) - Haze has remained in several areas in the Thai South although recent downpours have helped relieve the smog. Dr. Sirichai Leewannapasai, public health chief of Thailand's southern Songkhla province, told journalists Tuesday that air pollution from forest fires on Indonesia's Sumatra Island has remained in several southern Thai provinces for days, prompting health officials concerned to have kept monitoring the situation and prepared measures to protect local people. Dr. Sirichai said that officials of local hospitals are also ready to distribute face masks, as haze in the Lower Thai South can worsen because there are about 310 wildfires-borne hot spots on the Sumatra Island with smog having been blown to the southern Thai region by the southwesterly monsoon, coupled with a lingering forest fire at the Khuan Khreng peat swamp forest in Nakhon Si Thammarat province, also in the Thai South. Nakhon Si Thammarat's provincial airport has, however, resumed its services since Tuesday morning amid thin haze, after hours of a temporary suspension in the wake of an incident in which local people's burning weeds had spread to reach a forest near the airport and caused thick smog hindering normal aviation services. Firefighters put out the blaze at around midnight. Haze has also blanketed adjacent Satun province for four days, but the smog relieved Tuesday morning with the amount of particulate matters dropping from 85 to 66 micrograms per cubic meter of air in the vicinity of the provincial hall. (TNA)