BKK: pollution city

Bangkok has a major problem: pollution. There's a strangely high level of awareness of pollution but very few people seem to actually be doing something to stop it. Smog is particularly bad, and you see many people who work outside near the street wearing face masks.

OK they might block very large particulate pollution, but apart from that it's really not going to help much I think. This picture shows buildings on the horizon apparently shrouded in mist, but it's just smog. As the weather is so warm, combined with the very heavy traffic and ubiquitous barbecues blazing all over the sois, smog is really not going to go away very soon. Apparently Asian countries haven't really started cooperating internationally to solve the air pollution problems either, but I'm sure it will happen soon as it's having major effects on people's health.

Then there's just plain old rubbish. There's a lot all over the place. People just seem to dump it in any free corner of the road. They hardly teach anything about respect for the environment yet, although UNESCO is trying to get the Asia-Pacific to start integrating sustainable development into schools' curricula.


Round the corner from my appartment, there's some really bad water pollution. The water looks black, and further down, it's totally eutrophied (i.e. practically no oxygen left in it, so bad news for aquatic life), with green algae growing all over it. But the surprising thing is, just nearby I saw a toad and in the evening I can hear frogs singing out their mating calls! Just goes to show theoretical biology and reality can sometimes differ - at uni, I was taught that frogs and toads are highly pollution sensitive and tend not to live in polluted areas...