Air Quality

As mentioned before, the traffic here in Jakarta is extremely heavy and this has an impact the air quality.  From our apartment window we can see an indicator of this by simply looking at the high-rise buildings in the distance.

The quality levels can change dramatically throughout the day.

In the morning, when rush hour gets underway, the levels rocket and the buildings disappear into the smog.















The levels typically drop around mid afternoon and you can start to see the buildings much better.

But by late afternoon they slowly disappear again, as the afternoon rush hour traffic builds up.  Sadly, I report there are some days when the smog does not seem to lift at all.

To confirm the visual indications seen, I came across an interesting website recently which shows a real-time air quality index.

Here is what it was like at around lunchtime today.
At its highest this morning we had an ACI of 161.

To give you some comparisons, as I write the following cities have an Air Quality Index of:

• Stockholm AQI 38
• Manchester AQI 56
• London AQI 27-60 depending on the area of London
• Beijing AQI 184
• and Södertälje AQI 18

Another aspect to this is that indoors, the apartment needs cleaning on a very regular basis otherwise you notice it on your feet or our once white socks.  Whilst outdoors, when I wipe down the furniture on our balcony the cloth comes away black, but I suppose that makes a change from the yellow birch tree pollen that I have become used to in Sweden.

On a personal note, in an attempt to get fit, I have taken to running around the grounds of our apartment compound, in the mornings, before the temperatures rise.  Whilst doing my runs, I wonder what affect the poor air quality is having on my struggling lungs and whether I can use this as an excuse to explain my red face and slow running pace  :)

I normally enjoy being outside and I like have the balcony doors open most of the day, to let a breeze in but some days the smog is so bad you can nearly taste it, so the doors remain closed and the air conditioning on and I long to return to the fresh air of our home in Sund.

However, today is not one of those days, the AQI is surprisingly low, I can see the high-rise buildings quite clearly and the balcony doors are wide open!

Have a look to see how the air quality is near you and around the rest of the world, by going to aqicn.org, they even have a phone app.