Assignment: Choking in Chiang Mai

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 28 March 2024

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

For a period earlier this month, the historic city of Chiang Mai in northern Thailand had the worst air of any city in the world.

The city gained the same unwanted accolade last year. The practice of agricultural burning in the hills around Chiang Mai renders the air so toxic from February to April that it becomes unsafe to breathe. Respiratory problems and allergies caused by PM2.5, a type of pollution, led to more than 12,000 people being admitted to hospital in 2023.

The bad air affects everyone, including the young and physically fit. In December 2023, Krittai Tanasombatkul, a 29-year-old doctor and basketball fanatic, succumbed to lung cancer. Like 40% of people with the disease in the city, he was not a smoker.

Transcript

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0:30.0	I'm William Kramer and I'm reporting from Changmy in Thailand where the air is so
0:35.8	dirty and polluted that it's affecting the health of many of the city's
0:39.7	residents. evidence.
0:43.0	Okay, so I'm watching...
0:45.0	I'm watching seven guys and one girl,
0:51.0	and one girl, throw a basketball around here at Changmy University Medical School.
0:57.0	It's just gone 7 o'clock in the evening so it's dark but the court is floodlit and these guys are having a great time but there is
1:05.8	actually something quite tragic about this scene which is that one of their friends
1:11.8	in fact the captain of the school team, died in December at the
1:17.8	age of 29.
1:21.6	So tell me about him what type of person was he what was he like
1:24.8	France and serious and sometimes you can talk funny with him and when when you
1:31.5	practice basketball for competition he is very strictly and
1:36.4	Very strict. Yeah, he is the leader team leader for medical student team.
1:42.8	Yeah, yeah, so he took it really seriously.
	...

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