World Air Quality Report: 63 Indian cities are among the top 100 most polluted places on the Earth
According to the World Air Quality Report released by IQAir, India’s air pollution worsened in 2021. This brings an end to a three-year upward trend in air quality. The average level of air pollution, as measured by the lethal and microscopic PM2.5 pollutant, is 58.1 micrograms per cubic metre, which is more than ten times the WHO’s air quality guidelines. In India, no city met the WHO standard.
The situation in North India is even worse. For the fourth year in a row, Delhi is the world’s most polluted capital, with pollution up nearly 15% from the previous year. PM2.5 levels were nearly 20 times higher than WHO safety limits, with an annual average of 96.4 micrograms per cubic metre. The safe number is five.
While Delhi’s air pollution is ranked fourth in the world, Bhiwadi, Rajasthan, is the most polluted city, followed by Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh, on Delhi’s eastern border. Ten of the top 15 most polluted cities in the world are in India, with the majority of them clustered around the country’s capital.Indian cities dominate the list of the 100 most polluted places, with 63. Haryana and Uttar Pradesh account for more than half of the total. Residents in Delhi and Lucknow, for example, could add about a decade to their life expectancy if air quality levels met WHO standards, according to a ‘life index’ developed by the University of Chicago.
When asked about India’s poor performance in a previous edition of the World Air Quality Report in 2020, the centre dismissed the ranking, claiming that it was based primarily on satellite and other secondary data that had not been validated by “proper ground truthing.”
According to IQAir, its data is based “exclusively” on ground sensors, with nearly half of them operated by government agencies around the world. According to the IQAir report, China’s air quality improved in 2021. In fact, Beijing’s air quality has improved over the last five years, according to the report, thanks to emission controls and reductions in coal power plant activity and other high-emission industries. In fact, the cleanest air in India has been measured in Ariyalur, Tamil Nadu. Even so, this is three times the WHO’s recommended safe levels.
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