According to the air quality company IQAir, which compiles data from ground level monitoring stations across the world, nine of the top ten cities in the world with the highest yearly average of fine particulate matter were in Asia last year, including six in India
This week, New York City and the US Northeast experienced days of suffering due to the thick, smoky air brought on by Canadian wildfires. However, inhaling air that is severely contaminated is a fact of life — and death — for a large portion of the rest of the globe.
Nearly the entire planet periodically breathes air that is worse than what the World Health Organisation considers to be acceptable. When foul air persists longer than the terrifying shroud that engulfed the US, which typically occurs in developing or recently industrialised countries, the danger increases. According to the UN's health organisation, most of the 4.2 million fatalities in 2019 that were attributed to outdoor air pollution happened there.
“Air pollution has no boundaries, and it is high time everyone comes together to fight it,” said Bhavreen Kandhari, the co-founder of Warrior Moms in India, a network of mothers pushing for clean air and climate action in a nation with some of the world's consistently worst air. “What we are seeing in the US should shake us all."
“This is a severe air pollution episode in the US,” said Jeremy Sarnat, a professor of environmental health at Emory University's Rollins School of Public Health. "But it's fairly typical for what millions and millions of people experience in other parts of the world.”
According to the air quality business IQAir, which compiles data from ground level monitoring stations across the world, nine of the ten cities with the highest yearly average of fine particulate matter last year were in Asia, including six in India.
Airborne particles or droplets of a diameter of 2.5 millimetres or less are referred to as fine particulate matter, or PM 2.5. That is much smaller than a human hair, and the particles can get deep into the lungs to irritate the heart as well as the eyes, nose, throat, and lungs.
Sajjad Haider, a shopkeeper in Lahore, Pakistan, is 31 years old and commutes to work every day on his motorbike. He has chest congestion, eye infections, and breathing issues despite wearing a mask and goggles to protect himself from the city's frequent air pollution, which has a population of 11 million.
“I can't afford a car and I can't continue my business without a motorbike," said Haider.
Last year, Lahore had the world's highest average concentration of fine particulate matter at nearly 100 micrograms per cubic meter of air. By comparison, New York City's concentration hit 303 at one point on Wednesday.
But New York's air often falls far within healthy norms. The US Environmental Protection Agency's limit for exposure is no more than 35 micrograms a day, and no more than 12 micrograms a day for longer-term exposure. In the previous two years, New York's annual average was 10 or less.
According to daily statistics from the majority of air quality monitoring agencies, New Delhi was still the second-most polluted city in the world on Thursday even as a dangerous cloud disturbed life for millions throughout the US.
Sandstorms are the main cause of the poor air quality that plagues several African nations near the Sahara Desert on a regular basis. On Thursday, AccuWeather assigned a purple rating for poor air quality to countries ranging from Egypt in the north to Senegal thousands of kilometres to the west. New York and Washington, D.C. received the same ranking this week.
Senegal has endured years of poor air quality. According to Dr. Aliou Ba, a senior Greenpeace Africa campaigner based in the nation's capital of Dakar, the situation is particularly terrible in the east of Senegal because desertification, or the Sahara's encroachment onto drylands, transports particles into the area.
By imposing restrictions on the majority of air pollution sources in the US, the Clean Air Act was passed in 1970, clearing up many of the nation's smog-filled cities. The historic regulation resulted in restrictions on harmful compounds like mercury, soot, and smog.
However, many emerging and recently industrialised countries frequently have lax or ineffective environmental legislation. Other factors that contribute to the rising air pollution in such countries include their reliance on coal, laxer regulations for car emissions, and the use of solid fuels for cooking and heating.
It's frequently difficult to see a clean blue sky in Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia, the fourth-most populous country in the world. Residents of one apartment block in the city's north, between two major ports where coal is transported and heaped, tried to filter coal dust with a net. It didn't work.
“My family and I often feel itching and coughing," Cecep Supriyadi, a 48-year-old resident, said. “So, when there is a lot of dust entering the flat, yes, we must be isolated at home. Because when we are outside the house, it feels like a sore throat, sore eyes, and itchy skin.”
With varying degrees of success, they have also attempted advocacy and mediation to persuade businesses and the government to clean the air.
Since Beijing was infamous for its eye-watering pollution that shrouded office skyscrapers in cloud, diverted planes, and sent the elderly and young to hospitals to be fitted with respirators, China has made improvements. When the air quality was at its worst, wealthy schools covered athletic fields with inflatable covers that rotated like airlocks, and home air filters became as common as rice cookers.
Closing or removing heavy industries from Beijing and the surrounding areas was essential to the improvement. Older, more polluting cars were taken off the road and frequently replaced with electric cars.
Although China continues to be the world's greatest producer and consumer of coal, hardly little of it is used in daily life. The WHO limit of 10 was exceeded by Beijing's average PM 2.5 level of 89.5 in 2013, but that number dropped to 58 in 2017 and is presently hovering around 30. Hotan was the only city in China to rank among the 10 worst cities for air quality.
Before the government started regulating the number of cars on the roads in the 1990s, Mexico City, which is surrounded by mountains that trap filthy air, was one of the most polluted cities in the world. Even if air pollution levels have decreased, the city's 9 million residents—22 million if you count the suburbs—rarely experience days when the level of pollution is deemed "acceptable."
According to the National Institute of Public Health, air pollution causes close to 9,000 fatalities in Mexico City each year. When farmers burn their fields to preparation for planting, it's typically worst in the dry winter and early spring.Authorities haven't released a full-year air quality report since 2020, but that year — not considered particularly bad for pollution, because the pandemic reduced traffic— Mexico City saw unacceptable air quality on 262 days, or 72 per cent of the year.
Intense rains during the humid summer months help to slightly purify the air in the city. That's what prompted Verónica Tobar to take her two kids to a modest playground on Thursday in the Acueducto neighbourhood next to one of the busiest streets in the city.
“We don't come when we see that the pollution is very strong," Tobar said. Those days “you feel it in your eyes, you cry, they're itchy," she said.
Her son was diagnosed with asthma last year and changes in temperature make it worse.
“But we have to get out, we can't be locked up,” Tobar said as her children jumped off a slide.