A new report has found that only seven countries are meeting an international air quality standard, with deadly air pollution worsening in places due to a rebound in economic activity and the toxic impact of wildfire smoke.
The report was by IQAir, a Swiss air quality organisation that draws data from more than 300,000 monitoring stations around the world.
Of 134 countries and regions surveyed in the report only seven are meeting a World Health Organisation (WHO) guideline limit for tiny airborne particles expelled by cars, trucks and industrial processes. The seven are:
The majority of countries are failing to meet the standard for PM2.5, a type of microscopic speck of soot less than the width of a human hair that when inhaled can cause a myriad of health problems and deaths, risking serious implications for people.
While the world's air is generally much cleaner than it was in much of the past century, there are still places where the pollution levels are particularly dangerous.
The report found that the most polluted country is Pakistan, which has PM2.5 levels more than 14 times higher than the WHO standard. India, Tajikistan and Burkina Faso the next most polluted countries.
In wealthy and fast-developing countries, progress in cutting air pollution is also under threat. Canada, long considered as having some of the cleanest air in the western world, became the worst for PM2.5 last year due to record wildfires, sending toxic smoke across the country and into the US.
In China, improvements in air quality were complicated last year by a rebound in economic activity in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, with the report finding a 6.5% increase in PM2.5 levels.
Glory Dolphin Hammes, North America Chief Executive of IQAir, commented that unfortunately things have gone backwards, and that: "The science is pretty clear about the impacts of air pollution and yet we are so accustomed to having a background level of pollution that’s too high to be healthy. We are not making adjustments fast enough".
The report also found that the most polluted urban area in the world last year was Begusarai in India, with India home to the four most polluted cities in the world. However much of the developing world, particularly countries in Africa, do lack reliable air quality measurements.
The WHO lowered its guideline for "safe" PM2.5 levels in 2021 to five micrograms per cubic meter, and by this measure many countries, such as those in Europe that have cleaned up their air significantly in the past 20 years, fall short.
Even the most stringent guideline may not fully capture the risk of insidious air pollution. Research released by US scientists last month found there is no safe level of PM2.5, with even the smallest exposures linked to an increase in hospitalisations for conditions such as heart disease and asthma.
Hammes said that countries should act to:
She said: "We share the atmospheric envelope with everyone else in the world and we need to make sure we are not doing things that harm those elsewhere".
Aidan Farrow, Senior Air Quality Scientist at Greenpeace International, said that better air quality is needed too. He said: "In 2023 air pollution remained a global health catastrophe, IQAir’s global data set provides an important reminder of the resulting injustices and the need to implement the many solutions that exist to this problem".
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