A resident shows warning cards as part of protests that accompanied the filing of a formal legal suit by several residents against the government with the Central Jakarta District Court on July 4 demanding the government put more effort into curbing air pollution. (JP/Donny Fernando)
The poor air quality of Indonesia’s capital city is back in the spotlight as air quality monitor Airvisual determined that Jakarta ranks as the city with worst air pollution in the world on the afternoon of Thursday, August 8, 2019.
At 2 p.m. Thursday, an Air Quality Index (AQI) of 160 with a fine particulate matter (PM2.5) concentration of 73.5 micrograms per meter cubic (µg/m3), which is categorized as unhealthy, was recorded in Jakarta.
Second in rank was Dubai in the United Arab Emirates with an AQI of 145 and a PM2.5 concentration of 53.3 µg/m3, followed by Hong Kong with an AQI of 136 and a PM2.5 concentration of 47.5µg/m3.
The numbers were only slightly different than the 5 a.m. readings when Airvisual recorded Jakarta’s AQI at 157 with a PM2.5 concentration of 66.7 µg/m3.
The capital has several times been ranked as the city with the worst air pollution in the world, according to air quality monitoring software companies, surpassing notoriously polluted cities like Shanghai in China or Karachi in Pakistan.
Airvisual is a website that tracks the air quality of major cities worldwide in real-time. It can be accessed through airvisual.com.
The city administration has been scrambling to curb the perpetual air pollution in the capital. Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan also issued a gubernatorial instruction on air quality control on August 1.
Several measures outlined in the instruction are to expand an odd-even traffic policy, limit the age of public transportation and privately owned vehicles, tighten emission tests, tighten control on industrial chimneys, and promote the use of pollutant-absorbing plants. /kga