Jakarta – It is time for Jakartans to stop waiting. We can no longer afford to merely complain about the slow pace of the city administration's actions to reduce pollution in this choking megapolis: We must be proactive in creating cleaner air ourselves.
While Jakarta officials and residents tend to focus on outdoor air pollution, a group of scholars recently pointed out that poor indoor air quality was equally dangerous for public health. This means many people are overlooking the invisible danger lurking inside their own homes.
The question remains: Will Jakartans wake up to this domestic threat, or will they wait passively for the city administration to work its magic? There are clear signs, however, that they have simply accepted severe pollution as a daily fact of life, a "new normal" they must endure.
Normally, front-page news like "Air pollution blamed for nearly 2 million respiratory infections in Jakarta" (Dec. 9, 2025, The Jakarta Post) would be horrifying. But the public has come to regard pollution as routine because it has been a daily concern in Jakarta for years, if not decades.
The article reported that in the afternoon on Dec. 7, the level of harmful PM2.5 (fine particulate matter) in Jakarta reached around 26 micrograms per cubic meter (ug/m3), citing data from Swiss air quality monitor IQAir. This is roughly five times the safe annual exposure stipulated in the World Health Organization's air quality guidelines.
Yet such reports have become background noise. Jakartans no longer view such a high figure as indicating a direct threat to their lives and livelihoods, despite the fact that air pollution is responsible for increasing cases of asthma, lung tissue damage, ischemic heart disease, kidney failure, hypertension and even symptoms of neurological disorders, like tremors. For hospitals in the city, treating these ailments has become a grim daily routine.
This is not to say the Jakarta administration is doing nothing. It has made significant efforts to make the city livable, including expanding its transit system (TransJakarta, MRT, LRT) and issuing regulations to restrict the use of private vehicles.
And the city's environment agency is now finalizing a road map on air quality control that integrates it with Indonesia's climate action plan, aiming to reduce emissions by at least 30 percent by 2030. This is a noble goal, but realizing such an ambitious plan will be next to impossible without public support.
According to official 2024 data, Jakarta is home to more than 12 million vehicles, including over 2.3 million cars and 9.1 million motorcycles. In stark contrast, its public bus fleet numbers just over 36,000. What is most disheartening is that more than 70 percent of private vehicles reportedly do not meet emission standards, despite the city's massive Blue Sky campaign.
Given this reality, we must take matters into our own hands.
On Sept. 15, the East Asia Forum published an article titled "Jakarta's air pollution crisis invades homes", written by six prominent scholars including Budy Resosudarmo from the Australian National University and Athia Yumma from the SMERU Research Institute.
In it, they warn that indoor concentrations of fine particulate matter often exceed outdoor levels, with the former averaging 40.7 ug/m3 and the latter 37.8 ug/m3. Both are well above the WHO guideline of 5 ug/m3 per year on average.
They also wrote: "Poorer homes often have more permeable walls, inadequate insulation and limited ventilation systems, which allow polluted outdoor air to infiltrate living spaces more easily."
To combat this, the city administration, health workers and the community should revive the practice of wearing face masks in public, as was mandatory during the COVID-19 pandemic. We must also provide free or affordable masks while implementing the campaign in public places, schools and offices.
We call on city authorities, nonprofit organizations, environmental activists and all Jakartans to unite in fighting this latent health hazard. Together, we can work a miracle.
Source: https://asianews.network/pollution-is-not-new-normal-the-jakarta-post