Haze returns to Malaysian towns

Haze returns to Malaysian towns

MALAYSIA: Smoke from forest fires on Indonesia's Sumatra island hit two coastal towns in Malaysia on Thursday and turned the air quality "unhealthy", according to official data.

Last month a state of emergency was declared in the two affected towns, Kuala Selangor and Port Klang, when they bore the brunt of a haze crisis that sent pollution levels there soaring to extremely hazardous levels.

The air pollution index in Kuala Selangor, west of the capital Kuala Lumpur, rose to 125 on Thursday after a brief respite since Sunday when it recorded 104, the environment department said.

Further south in Port Klang, Malaysia's biggest port where operations ground to a halt in last month's haze, the index reached 102. An "unhealthy" reading is anything between 101 and 200.

Nationwide, including in the capital Kuala Lumpur, in southern Johor state and in Sabah and Sarawak states on Borneo island, air quality remained moderate.

The environment department said satellite images showed that the number of "hot spots" in Sumatra rose to 100 from 78 last Sunday. There were 488 hot spots in Indonesia's Kalimantan on Borneo, up from 391. -- AFP