Long Thanh Airport, under construction in the Đồng Nai Province, is slated to be Vietnam’s biggest airport. With a 5,000 hectare site and costing USD16 billion the airport is designed to have capacity to handle 100 million passengers and five million tonnes of cargo per annum. High levels of dust pollution from levelling Long Thanh Airport construction site, caused distress and posed health risks for neighbouring communities. Between April and October 2022 inspections by Đồng Nai Department of Natural Resources and Environment found dust pollution at the site up to 18 times higher than permitted levels. Levelling works entailed digging up and filling and flattening vast volumes of soil and trucks carrying soil on the site stirred up clouds of dust. In December 2022 more than 1,800 vehicles and machines were operating on the airport site. By the end of March 2023 residents of neighbourhoods near Long Thanh Airport construction site had been shrouded in dust for several months. Satellite imagery dated 13th March 2023 showed progress of the levelling works.

One place worst affected by dust was the primary school at the heart of the Binh Son Commune. Doors were kept closed for the entire day but dust still seeped in. “It’s impossible to clean” said a school security guard, “the dust is everywhere and comes at all times.” A teacher at the school said pupils’ books were “terribly dirty”. Pupils’ hands were always red and they were not comfortable with wearing face masks. Ten people cleaned the school three times every day but dust got into every corner. Some households attempted to keep dust out with canvas tarpaulins or plastic sheeting. A local resident said before airport construction started air quality in the area had been good, but now it was “unbearable”. Another resident said it would be another two of three years until the airport is completed and they “could not bear the red dust”. The deputy chairman of the Vietnam Lung Association said exposure to dust on a daily basis can severely affect people’s health, causing damage to the lining of the respiratory tract or leading to pneumonia, lung infection or pulmonary fibrosis.

Green roofs were coated in red dust and residents spoke of dust on every surface. Farmers in Binh Son Commune grappled with pervasive red dust from the airport construction site. Dust had stuck to mangosteen and rambutan leaves just as the trees began to bear fruit. One farmer said his durian trees had not developed properly and more than half of the fruit had fallen. He and other farmers attempted to wash their trees, spraying them with water which was of limited effectiveness. Another farmer cleaned his trees from 2am to 8am each day, consuming a lot of water and electricity. Other crops were affected, including jackfruit, lychee, banana and sapodilla. Red plumes rose like fires from the construction site and dust was carried by the wind, turning the sky red and impacting on people living at some distance from the construction site, including in the Loc An-Ninh relocation area, a resettlement site for people displaced to make way for Long Thanh Airport. A blanket of dust hung in the air extending as far as 10 kiometres from the site.

A video filmed on the airport site in March 2023 shows a red dust ‘tornado’, a large, dense, rotating plume of dust. You can hear the rumbling sound of the tornado. Clouds of dust are generated when a bulldozer pours red soil into a truck. Footage from a moving vehicle shows areas of the site under a heavy haze of dust and trucks pumping water onto part of the site.

Efforts to address the dust problem, such as spraying water and deploying trucks to dampen the ground to reduce airborne dust, had been ineffective. Officials noted that the size of the site, the dry season and windy weather exacerbated the dust problems. Beginning in April 2023 dust mitigation measures were increased with construction of 10 reservoirs, each with capacity to store 3,200 cubic metres of water, to supply water for 60 trucks including two firefighting trucks. It was also announced that air conditioners would be installed at some schools near the construction site, to prevent dust from entering classrooms.

For more information see the case report on EJatlas, the world’s largest, most comprehensive online database of social conflict around environmental issues: Dust pollution from Long Thanh Airport construction, Vietnam. In April 2023, after publication of the case study, ACV was fined VND180 million (US$7,670) for dust pollution during construction of Long Thanh Airport, plus an additional fine of VND90 million (US$3,835) for failure to implement the environmental impact assessment report.