August 14, 2023
JAKARTA – Jakarta residents found their health to be worsening in the past week after the capital was named the most polluted city in the world.
Jakarta has topped Swiss company IQAir’s ranking of air pollution in major cities for almost a week since Aug. 7. Jakarta has since June also regularly recorded “unhealthy” levels of PM2.5 pollutants, a class of fine breathable matter that can penetrate airways to cause respiratory problems.
Talks about air pollution in Jakarta affecting health have been rife among social media users since last week, with many asking one another whether they or their children had been experiencing persistent coughs, flu and fever.
“My daughter has had a cough and flu for over three weeks without a fever. Over-the-counter medicines haven’t worked,” Jakarta-based illustrator Asmara Wreksono wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Aug. 9. “And when I brought her to the hospital, the doctor said she had a bacterial infection in her throat due to the air pollution.”
On Saturday, Asmara told The Jakarta Post that the Ear, Nose and Throat (ENT) specialist she visited told her that he had been getting many cases like her 10-year-old daughter in recent weeks.
Others living or working in Jakarta shared a similar story. Language data analyst Eres Ferro, 25, told the Post that he has not recovered from his flu and cough for almost two weeks.
Meanwhile, Vidy Aslama, a private company worker, said she recently caught a fever, flu and nasal congestion that will not go away.
“It’s not just me; almost everyone in my office in Tanjung Priok got sick,” Vidy said on Saturday.
Pulmonologist Erlang Samoedro said there was an “evident causality” between the rising cases of respiratory infections and the spike in pollution.
“I’ve been getting a lot of patients with ARIs [acute respiratory infections] recently, concurrent with the increasing pollution as of late,” Erlang said on Saturday.
He advised people to wear masks when going outside, or just stay inside if possible.
Jakarta Health Agency disease control and prevention division head Dwi Oktavia said on Friday that the number of acute respiratory infections this year had returned to pre-pandemic levels in 2018 and 2019.
She did not mention the numbers and what caused the respiratory problems, but the agency’s surveillance, epidemiology and immunization division head Ngabila Salama said separately on Friday that there were 100,000 ARIs cases on average every month this year.
While Ngabila said it was a regular pattern following the dry season’s cycle, another official at the agency previously said air pollution was among possible causes of acute respiratory infections.
A 2012 study by the Environment and Forestry Ministry showed that Jakarta’s air pollution caused over half of its population to suffer from various respiratory illnesses. In 2019, there were around 1.4 million cases of asthma, 200,000 bronchitis cases and 2.7 million acute respiratory infections in Jakarta, according to a survey by environmental NGO the Committee for the Phasing Out of Leaded Fuel (KPBB).
While some activists blame the high levels of toxic smog on clusters of factories and coal-fired power plants near Jakarta, an environment ministry official said motorized vehicles, both public and private, and the dry season were among the causes of the heavy pollution blanketing Jakarta.
The Jakarta administration is now working with the central government and its satellite cities to enforce stricter emission controls for each vehicle traveling to and in the city and expand the number of emissions test locations sites in a combined effort to tackle Jakarta’s worsening air pollution.