The WHO data shows that there is now little or no escape from the plague of poisoned air; people in 98% of cities in low- and middle-income countries with more than 100,000 inhabitants are breathing air with pollution levels that exceed WHO minimum safety guidelines.
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Half of the cities in high-income countries and more than a third in low-income and middle-income countries reduced pollution levels by 5% in five years. “It is good news that more cities are stepping up to monitor air quality, so when they take actions to improve it they have a benchmark”, says Dr Flavia Bustreo, WHO Assistant-Director General, Family, Women and Children’s Health.
Although still very polluted, the city has seen an improvement as in 2014, New Delhi had topped the WHO’s most polluted cities in the world list with a PM2.5 reading of 153. The WHO says more than 7-million premature deaths occur every year due to air pollution, 3-million of them due to outdoor air quality.
“It is clear from this report that the United Kingdom is facing an air pollution crisis”.
On average, pollution levels worsened by 8% between 2008 and 2013, although most cities in rich countries improved the state of their air over the same period.
Crucially, key African centres like Nigeria’s mega-city Lagos were excluded from the list because of the sparse availability of air quality data in many parts of the continent, World Health Organization said.
But anyone who lives in Lagos, Tehran, Kabul or 1,000 other cities in poor countries knows well, the traffic is getting worse every year and the air is increasingly unbreathable.
The report found cities and towns that have the poorest air quality are in the Eastern Mediterranean and South East Asian regions, followed by countries in Africa. That figure decreases to 56 percent in richer countries. Several factors determine the quality of air that a city breathes, major one is transportation.
The agency’s latest air pollution database reveals an overall deterioration of air in the cities and highlights the growing risk of serious health conditions also including stroke and asthma.
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“The WHO data illustrates just how immediate the problem of air pollution is and that we need radical and rapid action to tackle the twin issues of air pollution, which is killing urban citizens, and climate change, which threatens people’s lives today and in the future”, said Mark Watts, executive director of the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, which focuses on local level ways of cutting greenhouse gas emissions. Because the effects of air pollution are chronic, or slow, they build up in the body and impact mostly on older people.
