A recent report indicated that the majority of the world's populations suffer from air pollution. Only 17% of cities in the world meet air quality standards. The Swiss data center of IQAir, specializing in air quality monitoring, has analyzed data from 40,000 monitors in 138 countries and highlighted that the most polluted countries are Chad, Congo, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and India.
Six Indian cities ranked among the top ten most polluted cities in the world, with the most polluted being the industrial city of Barnala in the north-east of India. Experts noted that actual pollution levels could be higher due to insufficient monitoring in many areas. For example, in Africa, there is one monitor for every 3.7 million people.
To combat the problem, more quality control stations have been established. This year allowed the addition of data from 8,954 new locations and the installation of more than a thousand new monitors. However, last week, the control efforts took a hit when the U.S. Department of Health announced that it would no longer publish data on air quality received from its satellites and consulates worldwide.
Breathing polluted air over a prolonged period can cause various ailments including Alzheimer's disease and cancer, as explained by Fatima Ahmed, a leading scientist and expert on air pollution at the Singapore Center for Planetary Health. According to the World Health Organization, due to air pollution, seven million people die each year.
"If you have polluted water or not, you can ask people to stay indoors every day (for now, it is filtered), but if you have polluted air, you can't ask people to stop breathing," Ahmed added.
