India has the world’s worst air pollution
22 of the top 30 most polluted cities in the world are in India.
India accounts for seven of the world’s 10 cities with the worst air pollution, according to a new report.
Gurugram is the world’s most polluted city, according to Greenpeace and AirVisual, which found it had an average air quality index of 135.8 in 2018 — almost three times the level which the US Environmental Protection Agency regards as healthy. Three other Indian cities, and Faisalabad, in Pakistan, made up the top five. Out of the 20 most polluted cities worldwide, 18 were in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
New Delhi was ranked at 11, making it the world’s most polluted capital, ahead of Dhaka, in Bangladesh, and Kabul, in Afghanistan.
Climate change “is making the effects of air pollution worse by changing atmospheric conditions and amplifying forest fires,” the report said, while noting that the key driver of global warming, burning fossil fuels, is also a major cause of dirty air. According to the report, air pollution will cause around 7 million premature deaths globally next year and have a major economic impact.
The AirVisual and Greenpeace index was based on the quantity of PM2.5 registered last year in tens of thousands of air-quality monitoring stations around the world. PM2.5 is particulate matter that has a diameter of less than 2.5 micrometres, which is about three percent the diameter of a human hair.
Of the 3,000 cities measured in the report, 64% exceeded the World Health Organization’s annual exposure guidelines for PM2.5. PM2.5 includes pollutants such as sulfate, nitrates and black carbon, which can sneak deep into the lungs and cardiovascular system. Exposure to such particles has been linked to lung and heart disorders, and can impair cognitive and immune functions.
The 92 most-polluted cities all had an “unhealthy” average annual presence of the particles, which can penetrate deep in the lungs and bloodstream and cause a wide range of adverse health effects, including premature death in the most extreme cases.
