Malaysia has closed schools across its capital and five states as smoke from forest fires in Indonesia pushes air pollution to unhealthy levels. About two million students are affected, and Singapore’s air has been rated “very unhealthy”.

Malaysia has closed schools in its capital and several states as smoke from Indonesian forest fires pushes air pollution to unhealthy levels, Al Jazeera reported.

The closures on Friday, October 9, affected roughly two million students.

Where Schools Are Closed

Schools were ordered shut across Kuala Lumpur, the administrative capital Putrajaya, and the states of Johor, Malacca, Negeri Sembilan, Pahang and Selangor.

How Bad the Air Is

Kuala Lumpur recorded an Air Pollutant Index (API) reading of about 170. The API is a government-run measure of air quality.

Under Malaysian guidelines:

  • above 100 is unhealthy
  • above 200 is very unhealthy
  • above 300 is hazardous
  • beyond 500 is the threshold for declaring a local emergency

In Singapore, at the southern end of the Malay Peninsula, air quality fell into the “very unhealthy” range, according to the monitoring firm IQAir.

What Malaysia’s Leaders Said

“The haze issue is indeed at a worrying level,” said Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim.

He said he had spoken to Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto, who had agreed to take “the necessary steps”, though he gave no details. Anwar has asked his foreign minister to push for an urgent meeting of environment ministers from the ASEAN group of Southeast Asian countries, and said Malaysia is stepping up cloud seeding to bring rain.

Malaysia’s king, Sultan Ibrahim, said schools should close whenever readings reach 150 or higher, and called for measures to protect schoolchildren, older people and patients with respiratory illnesses.

The Fires in Indonesia

Indonesia is experiencing its worst fire season in more than a decade.

  • Fires have burned across six provinces
  • At least 200,000 hectares have been scorched
  • Indonesia’s health ministry has recorded more than 170,000 respiratory infections

The true number of infections is likely to be higher, Al Jazeera’s correspondent noted, because the figure covers only people who sought medical care.

In August, an Indonesian minister warned that El Niño conditions were threatening more fires during the dry season. Smoke began to blanket the region a month later.

Formula One Goes Ahead

The haze has also worried organisers of Singapore’s Formula One weekend, which runs from Friday to Sunday. They have said the race will go ahead, with masks and extra medics available.

Image: Haze over Kuala Lumpur during an earlier episode in 2012 (file photo). Photo by Firdaus Latif via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0.