Air Quality in Kandal

About this tool

The card at the top of this page is the latest reading from the one monitoring location that the azwebdata service holds under the city name "Kandal" — a single point anchored at about 11.48°N, 104.95°E in the peri-urban strip that wraps around Phnom Penh's northern edge. It is a station reading, not an average of the province: Kandal is a ring of very different places, and the point behind this number sits closest to the capital, not in the rural districts east of the rivers. That placement shapes what the card can honestly tell you. The peri-urban ring lives on the capital's spillover — commuter traffic on the national roads, construction, factories and new boreys — and it also contains Cambodia's densest brick-kiln cluster: a 2019 census counted 464 kilns nationwide, 109 of them in Kandal, most strung along the Mekong and Tonle Sap banks, and reporting in 2023 documented garment waste being burned as fuel at kilns in and around Phnom Penh. Use the card for the commuter's morning call and the borey family's evening walk — and keep in mind that a kiln district or a river island kilometres away is not what this number measures.

How it works

When you open the page, your browser asks the InKhmer API for the province id kandal. The service looks up its Cambodia station table, finds the entry with that cityId — latitude 11.4833, longitude 104.95 — and requests the latest air-quality snapshot azwebdata stores under the location name "Kandal". Scheduled Cambodian locations are refreshed every thirty minutes; anything else is fetched on demand and held in a fifteen-minute cache. When OpenAQ has no matching station, OpenWeatherMap's modelled air-pollution values are used instead, mapped onto the same AQI bands. The AQI is derived from the PM2.5 concentration through the US EPA breakpoint table, with PM10 as fallback. The honest limit is the anchor point: at 11.4833°N, 104.95°E the location sits in the ring nearest the capital, so the card reflects the Phnom Penh-adjacent strip — commuter corridors, construction, urban spillover — rather than rural Kandal. The brick-kiln corridors along the rivers are real sources, but they are kilometres from the point, and their smoke reaches the card only as drifting plumes. If the provider stops answering, the last good cached value is served; with nothing available, the page shows "No air quality data at the moment".

Use cases

• A commuter driving from Ta Khmau into Phnom Penh checking the band before deciding whether the moto ride needs a mask.
• A family in a new borey near the ring road weighing the card before an evening walk with small children.
• A garment-factory safety officer using the reading as context when advising workers with respiratory conditions.
• A school in the peri-urban strip moving outdoor activities indoors on days the card crosses into the sensitive-groups band.
• A resident planning a weekend visit to relatives in the river districts comparing the card with the Cambodia overview.
• A moto-taxi driver working the National Road 1 and 2 corridors deciding when a long shift becomes a mask shift.

Frequently asked questions

• Does this reading cover rural Kandal or the river districts?

  No — and for Kandal this is the limit that matters most. The number comes from the single monitoring location azwebdata holds under "Kandal", anchored at about 11.48°N, 104.95°E in the peri-urban strip at Phnom Penh’s edge. Khsach Kandal, Lvea Em, the kiln corridors along the riverbanks and the districts near the Vietnamese border are all kilometres away and not directly measured. The card is the capital-adjacent ring’s reference point; for a river island or kiln village, treat it as a directional signal at best.

• Is this the official government reading for Kandal province?

  No. Cambodia’s Ministry of Environment runs its own monitoring programme and publishes readings through its own channels. This page is independent: it serves OpenAQ monitoring data — with OpenWeatherMap as fallback — collected through the azwebdata service for one location in the province’s capital-adjacent ring. Use it as a convenient public reading, not a government bulletin; for official announcements, refer to the Ministry of Environment.

• Why do brick kilns matter for Kandal’s air?

  Because Kandal holds the densest brick-kiln cluster in the country. A 2019 census of the Cambodian brick industry counted 464 operational kilns nationwide, with 109 of them — 23.5 percent — in Kandal, most sited along the Mekong and Tonle Sap banks where the clay is. Reporting in 2023 documented kilns in Kandal and Phnom Penh burning garment waste as cheap fuel, a practice linked to respiratory complaints from workers and neighbours. The kilns are real local sources, but they sit kilometres from the station that produces this card, so their smoke reaches it only as drifting plumes.

• How much of the card is Phnom Penh’s pollution?

  A great deal, because the anchor point sits in the ring closest to the capital. Commuter traffic, construction and factories spill out of Phnom Penh into this strip, and the provincial inventory reflects the split: rice-straw burning in Kandal is moderate — estimated at roughly a quarter of Battambang’s load — while the peri-urban corridor’s emissions run all year. In practice the card tracks the capital’s daily rhythm more closely than it tracks the rice belt, which is exactly what the anchor point implies.

• How fresh is the reading on this page?

  Azwebdata refreshes its scheduled Cambodian snapshots every thirty minutes and serves other locations through a fifteen-minute on-demand cache, so the freshest value is normally under half an hour old. Your browser requests the latest value when the page loads, and the card shows the time the monitor observed the reading. It is a snapshot, not a minute-by-minute feed and not a forecast.

• What does the page show when the station is offline?

  It degrades quietly rather than breaking. If the provider stops answering, azwebdata serves the last good cached value for the location, and the "Updated" line shows when that data was served. If nothing is available at all, the page shows "No air quality data at the moment" instead of an error or a made-up number.

• Which pollutant drives the AQI for Kandal?

  PM2.5 — fine particles small enough to reach deep into the lungs — in almost every reading. The upstream publishes raw concentrations per pollutant, and this service derives the headline AQI from the PM2.5 value using the US EPA breakpoints, falling back to PM10 when no PM2.5 sensor reported. The pollutant table on the card still lists PM2.5, PM10, ozone, NO₂, SO₂ and CO individually.

• I live near the factories on the ring road — does the card cover my street?

  It is the closest public number you will get, but it is not your street. The monitoring point behind the card sits in the same peri-urban ring, so it tracks the strip’s general conditions — commuter traffic, construction, the capital’s spillover — better than any reading from downtown Phnom Penh would. A factory plume on your road, however, is local: if the card is moderate and your neighbours are coughing, the plume is real and the card simply cannot see it. Use the card as the district’s baseline and your senses as the local correction.

Data and accuracy

Content last reviewed 19 October 2026