Air quality improves in haze emergency areas

PETALING JAYA: Air quality improved in Port Klang and Kuala Selangor Friday, a day after the Haze Emergency was declared in the two areas.
However, Kuala Lumpur, Petaling Jaya and Gombak saw a deterioration in air quality compared with Thursday evening.
At 11am Friday, the air pollutant index for Port Klang was 314 and that for Kuala Selangor was 293. Yesterday when the emergency was declared, the API for both areas were above 500.
Six areas recorded hazardous air quality on the API.
The areas were Shah Alam (412), Kuala Lumpur (365), Petaling Jaya (363), Port Klang (314), Gombak (325) and Putrajaya (351).
The Department of Environment in a statement said visibility at 11am at KL International Airport in Sepang, Subang and Kuala Terengganu had visibility between 700m and 1km.
Visibility in Petaling Jaya, Kuantan, Temerloh, Malacca, Sitiawan, Kota Baru and Bintulu was between 1.2km and 3km.
Several locations such as Ipoh, Muadzam Shah, Miri, Limbang, Sri Aman and Kota Kinabalu recorded visibility of between 4km and 6km while other areas had visibility above 8km.
Satellite images by the Asean Specialised Meteorological Centre showed that on Thursday, heavy cloud cover resulted in only 141 hotspots being detected in Riau, Sumatra and 10 hotspots in Kalimantan.
The satellite also showed that there were seven hotspots in Peninsular Malaysia, located in Kedah, Kelantan and Pahang.
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