Our Government is lying to us about Air Pollution : malaysia

In light of this recent reddit post about how Air Pollution causes ‘huge’ reduction in intelligence, I did some digging and was shocked by what I discovered.

Our Government has been lying to us about Air Pollution in Malaysia. It's much, MUCH worse than they want us to believe.

Check the Government website about air quality:

Not only is it misleading that they use "green" (associated with the environment) for "Moderate" air quality, but they use incomplete and averaged data to mislead all of us into thinking the air quality is much better than it actually is.

First of all, they only measure PM10 particles in the air, when PM2.5 particles are much more dangerous as they are much smaller and can lodge into our lungs more easily. That is bad and misleading enough. But they go one step further. To fully mislead us into thinking the air quality is not as bad as it actually is, the PM10 figures they show for air quality are an average of the last 24 hours which has the effect of hiding the peaks of really bad air pollution by smoothing them out with the periods of decent air quality.

How do I know this? Because one of the most popular sites in the world for air quality has a specific notice for cities in Malaysia that points this very fact out:

September 2nd 2016: Please note that the offical Air Quality Index (AQI) for Malaysia from DoE is only based on PM10, and not PM2.5 (read mode). The Air Quality Index is moreover reported as the average of the past 24 hours, and not of the previous hour (read mode). This means that during the period of Haze, where the Air Quality Index can deteriorate significantly and fast, the published AQI value is most likely lower than the actual Air Quality (i.e. the air pollution is most likely higher than what is published). We are trying to engage the DoE to fix this issue and, to start with, provide API readings without 24 hours averaging, which will defintely help to better reflect the actual conditions in case of haze. Note that DoE is indeed providing readings for each hour, but each hourly value is the average of the past 24 values/hours, while no averaging should be used (data should be reported as it monitored, without averaging; this is common practice).

Our Government is so misleading about Air Pollution that independent air quality websites are having to put actual warnings about it for years, yet you don't hear anything from our Government about any of this.

Want to know how much worse the Air Pollution is compared to what our Government is telling us?

Luckily, the UN-Habitat’s World Urban Forum (WUF9) was held in Kuala Lumpur this year. In preparation for the event, Clarity Movement Co. (Clarity), an environmental sensing startup founded in 2014 by a group of UC Berkeley graduates, collaborated with the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN–Habitat) to deploy a pilot air quality monitoring network in Kuala Lumpur. Their sensors are still up and you can read them here:

These independent sensors measure the Air Pollution based on actual PM2.5 readings like it should be. Right now, their sensor in Chow Kit (KL) is giving an Air Quality Index (AQI) value of a staggering 121 which is so high they are "unhealthy for sensitive groups" and so high even the Government air pollutant site calls AQI's of 100 - 200 "unhealthy".

Except that's not the score you'll find on the Government website. What is the current AQI score from the Government for the same area that's actually at 121 right now? Less than 60 which is less than half the actual reading! That's what ignoring PM2.5 and averaging over 24 hours gets you, completely misleading "measurements".

But wait, who's to say the UN-Habitat's sensors are corrent and the Government's readings are wrong?

Well, let's have a look at other independent sources...

Luckily, there is a service called "BreezoMeter" that we can use to check which of those two is more accurate. Enter an address in Kuala Lumpur (e.g. "Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia") to find out. Well, this site doesn't use the AQI index, it has it's own from 0 to 100 where a lower number is actually worse (unlike the AQI where a lower number is better). Right now, when the UN sensors in Kuala Lumpur are measuring "Unhealthy" AQI readings of 121 whereas the Government readings are measuring a "Moderate" AQI reading of under 60, BreezoMeter has the KL air quality currently at a horrible 18/100 that is so unhealthy they literally warn "Health Sensitivities - This is the kind of poor air quality that the doctors warned you about. Don't go outside now."

So it's safe to say the UN sensors are correct and the Government is lying to us about Air Pollution to avoid the kind of mass panic that is actually warranted when Air Pollution is so bad it not only kills some of us, it also makes all of us less intelligent.

I wouldn't be surprised if the Government forces the UN to take down the sensors it still has in KL to try to hide the real truth about just how bad the air quality is in Malaysia.

When are we going to say enough is enough and force the Government to be fully transparent about the Air Pollution problem in Malaysia and make the necessary changes to protect our health?

As others have pointed out, the Government earlier this month started taking into account PM2.5 into their readings. This makes my point even stronger, because it means that they are still significantly under-reporting the levels of air pollution even after taking into account PM2.5. This is proof-positive that they are lying about the air pollution as now they can't even use the excuse that they aren't taking into account PM2.5.

Here is the irrefutable evidence of this:

Click this link for the UN sensor: https://openmap.clarity.io/?viewport=3.1526938,101.7018181,15.5 Click on any of the sensors. Click on "Show in Plot" and make note of how bad the Air Pollution has gotten over the last 24 hours. Now go to this Government link: http://apims.doe.gov.my/public_v2/api_table.html At the top, enter the date and time 24 hours ago and compare the Government readings and you will notice it is conveniently always "Moderate" even when the independent sensors reported "Unhealthy" levels at that exact same time.

Case in point: On August 30 at 18:27, the Central Market sensor of the UN measured a staggering 168 AQI (119 @ 17:52, 122 @ 18:09, 168 @ 18:27, 129 @ 18:44, 120 @ 19:02) which is "Unhealthy" to the point where "Everyone may begin to experience health effects; members of sensitive groups may experience more serious health effects". Now compare that to the 6pm and 7pm Government readings for the exact same date by using the technique I described above and you will see our Government was reporting "Moderate" air quality below 60 (it would have to be above 100 for them to consider it "unhealthy" which is why they keep significantly under-reporting and lying to us).

The proof is 100% clear and irrefutable. As per the title of my post, our Government is lying to us about Air Pollution and even more so now that they are still under-reporting even after taking into account PM2.5.

As /u/dcx pointed out, our Government is reporting air quality as PM2.5 readings (μg/m3) and have NOT updated their scale after updating the readings to PM2.5. In other words, without changing the scale, they are providing PM2.5 readings as the actual AQI score instead of calculating the AQI score based on the PM2.5 readings which is very wrong. What does this all mean? Well, based on the AQI calculations, a PM2.5 reading of "60" where it's roughly been at for several days over most of Malaysia corresponds to an AQI of approximately 170 which falls well under the "Unhealthy" level meaning "Everyone may begin to experience health effects". However, our Government is showing those scores as "Green" and under "Moderate" which means "Air quality is acceptable". This is further proof that our Government is being dangerously misleading about the quality of our air!