Delhi emerges as world's most polluted capital city for 4th consecutive year; Details inside-

New Delhi, Mar 19: In an unwanted record, Delhi is ranked the world’s most polluted capital city for the fourth consecutive year since 2018, according to Air Quality Report 2023 conducted by Swiss organisation IQAir.

Notably, Delhi’s PM2.5 levels worsened from 89.1 micrograms per cubic metre in 2022 to 92.7 micrograms per cubic metre in 2023. The national capital was ranked the most polluted capital city in the world four times on the trot starting in 2018.

 

Apart from this, Bihar’s Begusarai has emerged as the world’s most polluted metropolitan area. Begusarai recorded an average PM2.5 concentration of 118.9 micrograms per cubic metre.

With an average annual PM2.5 concentration of 54.4 micrograms per cubic metre, India had the third worst air quality out of 134 countries in 2023 after Bangladesh (79.9 micrograms per cubic metre) and Pakistan (73.7 micrograms per cubic metre). India’s annual average PM2.5 concentrations rose slightly in 2023 to 54.4 µg/ m3 compared to 53.3 µg/m3 in 2022, the report reveals.

The report estimated that more than one billion people in India experience PM2.5 concentrations exceeding the World Health Organisation’s recommended annual guideline level of 5 micrograms per cubic metre.

It is pertinent to mention that northern India and Delhi struggle with smoke from crop burning, vehicle emissions, coal burning, waste burning, and biomass burning for heat and cooking. Vehicle emissions are responsible for 40% of PM2.5 emissions in the nation’s capital.

Air pollution is estimated to cause one in every nine deaths across the globe. As per the World Health Organisation (WHO), air pollution has been known to cause around seven million premature deaths each year, mainly affecting individuals with health conditions such as asthma, cancer, and stroke, among others. It has also been noted that exposure to high levels of PM2.5 can impact the cognitive abilities of children, worsen existing conditions, as well as affect the mental health of individuals.

This Swiss-based report provides a global review of air quality data for the year 2023 summarizing PM2.5 air quality data from 7,812 cities spanning 134 countries, regions, and territories. The data utilized to create this report was aggregated from more than 30,000 air quality monitoring stations operated by research institutions, governmental bodies, universities and educational facilities, non-profit organizations, private companies, and citizen scientists.

It was created from real-time air quality data sourced from IQAir’s global air quality monitoring platform that vets incoming data with validation and calibration protocols to harmonize air quality data from monitoring stations around the world.