Woman sells 4 houses, flees Hanoi to escape haze

Suffering from allergies caused by Hanoi’s polluted air, Mai Tuyet Minh decided to quit her well-paying job and sell four of her five homes in the capital to relocate.

Minh, 45, was born into a poor family in the city’s suburban district of Son Tay, but her relentless efforts brought her a great career and enabled her to become the head of procurement at the JW Marriott hotel.

She also founded two import-export companies on her own.

Her earnings, which amounted to hundreds of millions of dong (VND100 million = US$3,927) a month, enabled her to buy five properties in the most sought-after areas in Hanoi.

"I had always planned to live in Hanoi for the long term because I believed the city provided more opportunities to earn money than rural areas," she says.

But in 2015 she had a health crisis that entailed the removal of her gallbladder. Two years later she frequently suffered from hives.

"I was akin to an air pollution prediction device," she says. "Whenever I felt itchy, the next day the AQI (air quality index) would turn purple, indicating severely polluted air. The more polluted the air, the worse my skin allergies became."

She had to routinely take antihistamines, and stopping them would cause her allergies to flare up again.

Her doctor cautioned that regular medication like that could eventually harm her liver, further aggravating her skin conditions.

Her life became unbearable. The allergies prevented her from concentrating at work and even sapped her motivation to get up from bed each day.

Her son, a high school student, also struggled with chronic allergic rhinitis and frequently needed antibiotics. Her mother’s health deteriorated, and was later diagnosed with lung cancer. Her father suddenly had a stroke and consistently struggled to breathe.

"I felt like going insane, wanting to smash something," she says. "I lost interest in everything, feeling that money and status were no longer important."

(Hanoi’s Long Bien bridge area could be seen covered in fog Dec. 11, 2024. Photo by VnExpress/Ngoc Thanh)

According to the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, air pollution in Hanoi has worsened over the past 10 years, with each year especially bad from October to April of the following year.

The National Environmental Status Report for 2016-2020 shows the average PM2.5 dust concentration in Hanoi was almost double the national level.

In 2019 days with AQI categorized as unhealthy accounted for 30.5%.

Ref: Woman sells 4 houses, flees Hanoi to escape haze Photo Credit- VnExpress/Ngoc Thanh