A new analysis found that last year, only 10 countries and 9 percent of global cities had air quality that met WHO guidelines for harmful fine-particle, or PM2.5, pollution.
Some of the places most affected were in the Middle East, Africa, and central and south Asia. Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Tajikistan and Burkina Faso ranked as the five countries with the most polluted air last year, weighted by population, said a report by IQAir, a Swiss air quality technology company that collects air-sensor data around the world.
The capital cities with the worst air were New Delhi, Dhaka, Ouagadougou, Dushanbe and Baghdad, IQAir found.
Photo: Reuters
Capitals with the lowest concentrations of PM2.5 were mostly in Oceania, Scandinavia and the Caribbean, and included Wellington, Reykjavik and Hamilton.
One of the most common forms of air pollution, PM2.5 “kills more people than any other pollutant that is out there,” said Glory Dolphin Hammes, CEO of the North American division of IQAir, which has released annual World Air Quality reports since 2017.
Sources of PM2.5 pollution vary widely, from brick kilns in Bangladesh to mining in Latin America. However, the overwhelming source is the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas.
Outdoor air pollution, caused primarily by PM2.5, is responsible for the early deaths of more than 4 million people worldwide each year, the WHO has said.
A separate analysis led by a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Germany found that fossil fuels are responsible for 65 percent of those deaths.
“The first thing to understand about PM2.5 is it’s a very complex mixture of gases and particles that are suspended in the air, and it’s defined by size,” said Misbath Daouda, an assistant professor of health equity and environmental justice at the University of California at Berkeley who was not involved in IQAir’s analysis.
The particles are “small enough that they can enter different organ systems and the bloodstream; they can irritate the lungs and the respiratory system. And that’s what makes them so detrimental for health,” Daouda said.
PM2.5 pollution is linked to increased rates of heart attack and stroke, and can cause what is known as oxidative stress — essentially, stress that damages the body’s cells faster than they can repair themselves.
Oxidative stress is associated with a variety of illnesses ranging from Parkinson’s disease to cancer.
More recent research have shown that exposure to PM2.5 can also affect brain development, “so that’s a concern for young children,” Daouda said.
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