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As industrialization starts playing a much important role in the economy, less emphasis is given on Air Pollution especially in South Asia. A new report published by AirVisual has presented a very dire picture of the situation.
The reading looked at 3,000 cities and found that around 64% were exceeding the PM2.5 particulate matter guidelines issued by the World Health Organization. Every city in the Middle East with around 99% of the cities in South Asia were found exceeding the limit.
India dominated the list with more than 20 cities in the top 30 list. In fact of the top 10 most polluted cities in the world, seven cities were Indian. Gurugram, previously known as Gurgaon took the top spot with an average of 135 micrograms of PM2.5 per cubic meter throughout the year.
To people’s surprise, Faisalabad ranked much higher than Lahore and took the third spot with the latter being ranked 10th just ahead of Delhi. Fortunately enough, only two Pakistani cities made it in the list of top 100.
“Air pollution steals our livelihoods and our futures,” said Yeb Sano, executive director of Greenpeace Southeast Asia. “In addition to human lives lost, there’s an estimated global cost of 225 billion dollars in lost labour, and trillions in medical costs,”
Air pollution is extremely dangerous as The aforementioned particles can penetrate the lungs and the bloodstream and cause severe health issues.
Here are the 10 most polluted cities in the world:
- Gurugram, India
- Ghaziabad, India
- Faisalabad, Pakistan
- Faridabad, India
- Bhiwadi, India
- Noida, India
- Patna, India
- Hotan, China
- Lucknow, India
- Lahore, Pakistan
