Mimi Marlina is 45, a housewife in Pontianak, and on September 16 she rode her motorbike through thickening haze wearing a cloth mask to buy groceries and medicine for her family.
Part of our Haze and air quality by city guide.
The air she rode through had already registered an IQAir Air Quality Index of 593 two weeks earlier. That is more than double the "hazardous" threshold most public health scales even bother to define past.
"We can still hold it off with medicines," she told Reuters, "but I'm concerned that if this persists, it will lead to worse illnesses." She is not an outlier. She is the default condition for anyone in West Kalimantan who has no alternative to a motorcycle.
Key takeaways
- Pontianak's IQAir Air Quality Index hit 593 on 1 September 2026, and PM2.5 readings there reached 761 µg/m³ by 12 September. That is over 50 times WHO's 24-hour PM2.5 guideline of 15 µg/m³ (Al Jazeera, Berita Borneo/IQAir).
- Indonesia's Health Ministry logged 113,336 haze-linked respiratory infections nationwide by 9 September, more than double the 50,891 recorded just eight days earlier (CNN).
- A passive-vent helmet plus a cloth or surgical mask does not filter air at these concentrations. The vents pass ambient air straight through and the mask leaks around the chin bar regardless.
How bad is the air in Pontianak right now?
Pontianak's air quality has been in the "hazardous" band for weeks and is getting worse, not better. IQAir recorded an Air Quality Index of 593 in Pontianak on 1 September 2026, with nearby Palangkaraya in Central Kalimantan reaching 780 the same week (Al Jazeera).
By 12 September, local monitoring showed PM2.5 in Pontianak at 761 micrograms per cubic metre, with IQAir's index reading 1,368 (Berita Borneo). That is more than 50 times the World Health Organization's 24-hour PM2.5 guideline of 15 µg/m³.
The scale of exposure is national. More than 12.5 million people across seven Indonesian provinces have been exposed to the fire haze, and authorities have distributed close to a million masks and deployed thousands of medical workers in response (CNN). None of that changes what happens inside a rider's helmet on the way to the market.
How much does a grocery run actually cost you?
Illustrative model using Pontianak's 12 September PM2.5 reading (761 µg/m³) and an assumed 1.5 m³/h effective inhalation rate at riding pace. Filtered assumes H11 media at ≥95% PM2.5 capture. Not a medical dosimetry tool.
| Minutes | Unfiltered dose (µg) | H11-filtered dose (µg) |
|---|---|---|
| 5 | 95 | 4.8 |
| 10 | 190 | 9.5 |
| 20 | 381 | 19 |
| 30 | 571 | 29 |
| 45 | 857 | 43 |
| 60 | 1,142 | 57 |
Why a standard helmet and mask don't work here
Sized for airflow at 40 to 80 km/h, not filtration. Ambient PM2.5 goes straight in.
A mask under a chin bar doesn't seal to skin, so unfiltered air enters around the nose bridge on every inhale.
Mechanical induction pulls air through media regardless of road speed, including stopped in traffic.
Passive helmet vents are engineered for cooling airflow at riding speed. They are not a filtration component, and they pass ambient air through essentially unmodified regardless of how hazardous it is outside.
A cloth or surgical mask worn underneath a full-face helmet, like the one Mimi Marlina wore on her ride, is being asked to do hours of duty at concentrations far outside anything it was designed for, and it still doesn't seal against the helmet's chin bar and visor gasket. Unfiltered air leaks in around the nose bridge on every inhale.
Stop-start city traffic compounds it further: at idle, a rider sits in the pooled exhaust-and-haze wake of the vehicle ahead for minutes at a time, not seconds, layering vehicle exhaust on top of an already-hazardous ambient reading.
Ride with filtered air
Filters haze PM2.5 on every ride
Easi Breezi mounts on your scooter or motorbike and feeds H11 HEPA-filtered air into your helmet. Bike-powered, no batteries, no charging.
What does the next five years look like for Pontianak's riders?
The following is a synthesis built from cited research, not a direct forecast from any single source. It is flagged clearly as such.
Indonesia's fires have followed a recognisable pattern before: catastrophic El Niño-driven years in 1997 and 2015, each followed by periods of relative calm.
After 2015, Indonesia stood up the Peatland and Mangrove Restoration Agency (BRGM), which restored 1.6 million hectares of peatland and 84,396 hectares of mangrove over nine years before concluding its mandate in December 2024 (tanahair.net).
That agency no longer exists heading into 2026's fires, which fire-tracking researchers at Wageningen University describe as "on track" to match 2015's record 333 million tonnes of carbon, and 76 million tonnes had already been emitted by 7 September (CarbonBrief).
Scientists project this year's El Niño, which started in June and is expected to last into 2027, will be one of the most intense on record (CarbonBrief).
Peer-reviewed research published in npj Natural Hazards in April 2026 found that El Niño conditions make a fire season reaching 1997/2015-level severity 2.7 times as likely as in a non-El Niño year (Nature).
Put together (a repeating multi-decade fire cycle, a structural mitigation agency that no longer exists, and a risk multiplier this pronounced), riders in Pontianak should reasonably expect at least one more event of comparable severity before 2031, with less institutional capacity standing between them and it than existed in 2015.
Why active filtration is the only thing that works at 593 AQI
A helmet system with active, powered induction pulls air through a filter media mechanically. It doesn't depend on road speed the way passive vents do, so it keeps working at a dead stop in Pontianak's traffic.
Easi Breezi's system uses H11-rated HEPA media filtering ≥95% of PM2.5, sealed into the helmet itself rather than relying on a separate mask sealing against skin under a chin bar. That removes the leak path that undermines mask-under-helmet protection at concentrations like Pontianak's right now. See how it works on the Easi Breezi product page.
Frequently asked questions
What AQI is dangerous for motorcycle riders?
Most air-quality scales flag anything above 300 as "hazardous" for the general population. Pontianak's IQAir readings of 593 on 1 September and an index of 1,368 alongside 761 µg/m³ PM2.5 on 12 September are both far past that threshold, with no upper bound where the risk simply stops rising.
Can a mask under a helmet filter haze this bad?
Not reliably. A cloth or surgical mask worn under a full-face helmet doesn't form an airtight seal against the chin bar and visor gasket, so unfiltered air leaks in around the nose bridge on every inhale. Most consumer masks aren't rated for sustained, hours-long exposure at these concentrations in the first place.
Does Easi Breezi work during a haze event like this?
Yes. It's built for exactly this case. Because the filtration is powered rather than passive, it keeps drawing air through H11 media at a dead stop in traffic as well as at riding speed. A dead stop is when passive vents stop moving any air at all.
How long is Indonesia's 2026 haze season expected to last?
The El Niño driving this year's fires is expected to persist into 2027, and researchers already describe 2026 as on track to match 2015's record emissions. So the season is not expected to ease on the usual seasonal timeline.
Is West Kalimantan's haze the same as Bali's or Kuala Lumpur's?
No. As we covered in our piece on Bali's haze, not every haze event has the same source. Pontianak sits close to the Borneo peatland and forest fires directly, making it one of the most acutely exposed cities in this year's crisis, rather than a downwind recipient like some other regional cities.
Ready to breathe cleaner on every ride?
Pontianak's riders don't get to choose whether they go outside. The motorcycle is the only way to reach groceries, medicine, and work. What they can control is what's actually filtering the air in front of their face. See how Easi Breezi's active HEPA filtration works: H11 media rated ≥95% PM2.5 capture, patent pending.
For ongoing coverage of this season's haze, our Sumatra fire-complex piece on Medan and our look at whether haze is getting worse every year cover the wider regional picture. Replacement H11 filter packs keep the system running through a haze season this long.
Written by Ash, mechanical engineer and founder of Easi Breezi, building an active HEPA filtration system for motorcycle helmets (patent pending). Based between Hong Kong and Bali, riding daily in the traffic this blog writes about.