According to an IQAir assessment, Delhi is the world’s most polluted capital for the fourth successive year.
Highlights
- Dhaka rated second most polluted city after Delhi, headed by N’Djamena (Chad), Dushanbe (Tajikistan) and Muscat (Oman).
- Globally, barely 3% of cities and no countries fulfilled the WHO’s current PM2.5 yearly air quality recommendations.
- New Caledonia (3.8) seemed to have the cleanest air, while Finland had the lowest PM2.5 values among developed countries (5.5).
The World Air Quality Report published by IQAir, a Swiss company, states that India’s air pollution rose in 2021. That halts a three-year upward trend in air quality. The average level of air pollution measured by PM2.5 is 58.1 g/m3. It is more than ten times the WHO’s air quality standards.
The study, which gives a snapshot of worldwide air quality in 2021, uses PM2.5 data from 6,475 cities in 117 nations.
Wakeup Call for Indian GovernmentÂ
In North India, things are even worse than in the rest of the country. For the fourth year in a row, Delhi has been named the world’s most polluted metropolis.
The pollution in Delhi has increased by over 15% over the past year. PM2.5 levels were over 20 times higher than WHO safety guidelines, with an annualized rate of 96.4 micrograms per cubic meter. 5 is indeed the safe limit.
Delhi ranks fourth in the world for air pollution. The world’s most polluted city includes Rajasthan’s Bhiwandi, followed by Uttar Pradesh’s Ghaziabad on Delhi’s eastern border. The ten most polluted cities in the world are all in India. The majority of them locates around the national capital.
Indian cities lead the list of the top 100 most polluted cities by 63. Haryana and Uttar Pradesh represent more than half of the total.
According to the University of Chicago’s air quality “life index,” inhabitants of Delhi and Lucknow could add a decade to their average lifespan if air quality matched WHO guidelines.
Avinash Chanchal, campaign manager for Greenpeace India, said the report again highlights that people have been inhaling dangerously contaminated air.
Sources of Air Pollution & Solutions
Vehicle emissions, coal-fired power plants, industrial waste, biomass combustion for cooking, and the construction industry are big polluters.
In fact, in November of last year, severe air pollution forced the closure of many significant power plants and businesses near Delhi. The situation gets predicted to cost India over $150 billion a year.
Polluted air causes approximately three deaths each minute. It also causes heart and lung problems, among other dangerous health impacts.
“Corrective steps be taken due to increased automobile sales in India. We must move to clean fuels and promote renewable energy. Governments must promote renewable energy for transportation and construct infrastructure that supports cycling, public transit, and pedestrians. The best part is that we don’t need to spend money on research to discover solutions to the air pollution problem; we already know the solution, and that is easily available. There is a lot of PM pollution in the air because people burn fossil fuels, which is a major factor in climate change,” explained Avinash Chanchal.
The Bitter Fact
According to official statistics, air quality in Delhi, Kolkata, and Mumbai deteriorated in 2021.
As per the recent statement in parliament, “poor” to “severe” air quality days totaled 168 in Delhi last year. It is up from 139 the year before, a sharp 21% increase.
Kolkata had 83 such days, up from 74, and Mumbai had 39, up from 20 the last year.
When queried about India’s dismal rating in the World Air Quality Report 2020, the center said it had based on satellite and other secondary data that wasn’t checked by “appropriate field observations.” IQAir claims that data is “exclusively” from ground sensors, approximately half of which gets controlled by governments.
The study clearly states the smoke from crop-burning after the rice harvest time. It is a politically controversial topic having parties often hesitant to take action towards farmers.
A recent study found that smog from nearby rice fields contributes to 45% of Delhi’s air pollution. Farmers do this because there isn’t much time between harvest and planting the next crop to get rid of the weeds.
But now, for the first time since 2014-15, when WHO declared Delhi the world’s most polluted city, Punjab and Delhi are ruled by the same political party, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).
Punjab is where most crop-burning occurs, and this year’s emphasis will be on what the AAP does to minimize air pollution.
To conclude,
The IQAir study says China’s air quality improved in 2021. As a result of emission management and limitations of coal power plant operations and other high-emission businesses, the study claims Beijing’s air quality has improved for the fifth consecutive year.
The cleanest air in India gets recorded in Ariyalur, Tamil Nadu. Even so, that’s three times the WHO’s recommended safe limit.
Published By: Manan Khurana
Edited By: Subbuthai Padma
