By Lian Cheng
KUCHING, Aug 12: As of 10 am this morning, the air pollution index (API) of five towns and cities in Sarawak show readings of 100 and more.
For the past few days, ILP Miri has been experiencing hazardous air quality but today, Miri, Sibu, Sri Aman and Kuala Baram joined the list.
Kuala Baram has taken over ILP Miri as the area experiencing the highest API of 302 in the whole of Sarawak.
ILP Miri which has been registering very high API and highest of of 396 6pm yesterday, shows a declining reading of 294 at 10 am this morning.
The high API readings in ILP Miri have been due to the twelve-day peat fire within the vicinity of the institute.
ILP Miri is about 15 km away from Miri city. It is thus not surprising that today, Miri also registered a moderately unhealthy API of 100.
Sibu is also experiencing unhealthy air quality with its API breaking 100 since 11 pm last night. The API readings in Sibu has gone up in the wee hours of the morning and as of 10 am this morning, the town showed an API reading of 168.
The API of Sri Aman broke 100 at 4 am this morning to reach 107. The readings continued to climb, until 7 am this morning, where readings showed that the API was dropping. As of 10 am this morning, the API reading for Sri Aman was 102.
As of 10 am, the API readings for various parts of Sarawak are as follows:
| Towns and cities | API |
| Limbang | 55 |
| ILP Miri | 294 |
| Miri | 100 |
| Samalaju | 74 |
| Bintulu | 83 |
| Mukah | 86 |
| Kapit | 63 |
| Sibu | 168 |
| Sarikei | 93 |
| Sri Aman | 102 |
| Samarahan | 79 |
| Kuching | 78 |
| Kuala Baram | 302 |
API of 0-50 indicates good air quality; 51- 100 is considered moderate; 101-200, unhealthy; 201-300, very unhealthy and above 300, hazardous. — DayakDaily
