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Only Seven Countries Meet WHO Air Quality Standard, Research Finds (theguardian.com) 56

Posted by BeauHD from the not-looking-good dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: 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, a new report has found. Of 134 countries and regions surveyed in the report, only seven -- Australia, Estonia, Finland, Grenada, Iceland, Mauritius and New Zealand -- are meeting a World Health Organization (WHO) guideline limit for tiny airborne particles expelled by cars, trucks and industrial processes. The vast majority of countries are failing to meet this 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, according to the report by IQAir, a Swiss air quality organization that draws data from more than 30,000 monitoring stations around the world.

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 most polluted country, Pakistan, has PM2.5 levels more than 14 times higher than the WHO standard, the IQAir report found, with India, Tajikistan and Burkina Faso the next most polluted countries. But even in wealthy and fast-developing countries, progress in cutting air pollution is 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 that ravaged the country, sending toxic spoke spewing across the country and into the US. In China, meanwhile, 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.

The most polluted urban area in the world last year was Begusarai in India, the sixth annual IQAir report found, with India home to the four most polluted cities in the world. Much of the developing world, particularly countries in Africa, lacks reliable air quality measurements, however. 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. But even this more 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 hospitalizations for conditions such as heart disease and asthma.
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Only Seven Countries Meet WHO Air Quality Standard, Research Finds More

Only Seven Countries Meet WHO Air Quality Standard, Research Finds

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  • Perhaps we should coat the trees with some all-natural fire resistant material so they wouldn't be quite so flammable. Just don't go into the forest and disturb the asbestos.

  • 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

    Australia had some pretty intense fire seasons a few years back too. Seems these things are highly variable. Should let the research team know, maybe they could spread out the measurements and average it over some time, but IQAir (a Swiss air quality organization that supposedly draws data from more than 30,000 monitoring stations around the world) seems to mostly want to sell me something. Download our app, and by the way here are some great air purifiers. LOL.

    • If you hadn't noticed, wildfires are becoming more commonplace (as a result of global heating) so PM2.5 from that source becomes yet another given that affects millions of people's health.

      • I can't speak for Canada or Australia but the California wild fires are from 3 primary causes:
        1) horrifically stupid forest management policies that -guarantee- huge fires every few years
        2) pg&e running above ground power lines
        3) arson

        There are a trivial number of California wild fires started by lightning or campers/hikers/smokers being stupid.

        • Whatever the cause, they're more frequent, bigger, & last longer. In other words, environmental conditions are making them increasingly more severe.

          • For kicks, I just asked meta AI what the primary cause of California forest fires is and also if forest management is a California wild fire problem.

            It gave back a link from the state's fire agency saying 95% of California wild fires are directly caused by human stupidity, be it arson, campers, pg&e, etc. It gave a long list of human idiocy I won't repeat.

            It gave a mixed reply on forest management saying basically that if managed well, fires can be reduced and if managed poorly, fires will increase. I

  • West Coast Purple Air Map at Night (Score:3)

    by theshowmecanuck ( 703852 ) on Wednesday March 20, 2024 @12:07AM (#64329801) Journal
    On cool/colder spring, fall, and especially winter nights, the west coast of Canada and the USA have brutally bad air. The worst in North America, especially at night when people are home. So many wankers heating their homes with wood stoves and no pollution controls or filters on their stacks to reduce particulates (even though the government tries to encourage it). And most don't use fuel that burns more efficiently because regular wood is cheaper. The people who burn it don't care, the smoke usually goes into the neighbours places and drifts miles. On Vancouver Island, anywhere north of Victoria, there are nights where it feels like wildfire season in the summer (it ranges from some nights at 50ppm PM2.5, to 140... just ridiculous). And if you bring it up, they call you city slicker and other bullshit. One guy even asked "do you really think natural gas is any cleaner?" Uhhhhh, YE-ahh! WTF. I guess long term to high particulate smoke does cause long term brain damage. Meanwhile on the mainland, 30 miles away in a metro area with way higher density, the air quality is 10ppm PM2.5. But that's because city ordinances are much stricter about wood burning stoves (they have to have emission controls). People don't get that wood burning stoves are one of the worst sources of air pollution in some areas.
    • We need to ban fireplaces and wood stoves. And backyard fire pits. And barbeques and smokers. And gas stoves.

      You will heat with your heat pump and cook on your induction stove and the jackboots will come for you if you dare to think otherwise.

      • You should really show them by using your BBQ inside the house. You don't need to only do it outdoors like some namby pamby who is scared of a little smoke.

      • Why ban? Seems a little extreme.

        You just need to discourage people from trying to socialise the cost of their actions onto others. People have the right to choose not to implement pollution controls, but that has a cost for others. So apply a sufficient tax on running something with no pollution controls and use the revenue to subsidise pollution controls for those willing to fit them. Let the market sort it out.

        • Been there, done that. Where I lived it was "spare the air days" with huge fines. I doubt the fines were commensurate with the pollution caused as I doubt running a fireplace for an hour did $500+ in damage, so they effectively banned fireplace usage.

        • The people complain bitterly when you try to tax them on anything, too. We have a carbon tax that's more-or-less revenue neutral, and gives back money as a carbon credit, so quite a few people make more than they spend. They don't like that either.

          Basically they want the right to do nothing at all, pollute the air, make life miserable for other people, and if you tell them that that should cost more or be illegal, they throw a fit.

        • If a large enough portion of the population does it, then the costs are not socialized. They are social.
      • Pfft, worthless half-measure. Stop adding heat to the atmosphere; ban all cooking now!

        • Pfft, worthless half-measure. Stop adding heat to the atmosphere; ban all cooking now!

          I'm guessing the sashimi and steak tartare are going to be verboten as well.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by DarkOx ( 621550 )

      Do you really think those filters, which have to go to landfill and be replaced (if anyone replaces rather than just leaving them to deteriorate for 20 years) and spew microplastics all over the place are better? To say nothing of the increased fire risk.

      There is not free lunch. Now you might be right for overall health it might be better to optimize for air quality than some of things I just mentioned, but we don't fully know that.

      The only actual solution is fewer people. If you live in the US or Canada y

    • Where I lived in California, they declared "spare the air days" pretty much every day. The fines are brutal and they strongly enforced them. No one in my region was heating their home burning firewood.

      Other areas I can't speak for but not the SF area.

    • Ugh yes. I live in Rio Dell, CA, a charming town formerly known for whoring and booze (the main street is still called Wildwood, which is what the town was known as back then) and which has no fucking noise ordinance, so it's only illegal to make loud noise specifically for the purpose of harassment. Why is that relevant to this discussion? Because a local tree company has their office on Wildwood near my home, and they bring stumps there for locals to cut up with their chainsaws in the parking lot. Then th

    • OTOH if you look at the given countries, Grenada, Iceland, Mauritius and New Zealand are islands surrounded by open open, Australia has an average population density of 0 people per square km, and that leaves Estonia and Finland, presumably all the metal drives the pollution away.

  • These countries have a combined TOTAL population of under 40 million people.

    So not enough to pollute.

  • First, I simply don't believe the results. I live in western MN and yes, when the CA fires were bad there was a perceptible haze but 350+ days a year, the air here is perfect. I suspect the sampling was done at the worst possible time to push a conclusion

    Second, there have always been wild fires. Human lungs and physiological systems have evolved in a world where dust is omnipresent. The authors seem to be suggesting that somehow we should live in a particulate free universe. We can't.

    • "Perceptible haze" is considered emergency levels of crap in the air.

      "Concerning" amounts of PM2.5 are undetectable by the human eye.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by argStyopa ( 232550 )

        And?

        To assert histrionically that air everywhere is catastrophically bad all the time because a COUPLE OF DAYS across the span of a year are hazy due to entirely natural events is so hyperbolic as to be worthy of ridicule.

        Personally, I think some of the PM2.5 standards are fairly utopian - the EPA seems to have rather arbitrarily decided that 12ug/CBM wasn't good enough and changed their goal to 9.
        BUT ALL SAFETY IS A COMPROMISE BETWEEN REALITY AND IDEAL.
        Last time I checked, the people in the cars around me

        • To assert histrionically that air everywhere is catastrophically bad all the time because a COUPLE OF DAYS across the span of a year are hazy due to entirely natural events is so hyperbolic as to be worthy of ridicule.

          Well, it's a good thing that I'm not asserting that, now isn't it?

          And yes, "all safety is a compromise", I never mentioned otherwise. I'm not sure why you're bringing up zero levels of PM2.5, I never mentioned anything about that.

          Jousting with a strawman might be fun, but maybe you could engage me? I'm a much more difficult opponent, in that my arguments aren't hyperbolic or ridiculous, thus much harder to argue against.

          Or, to rephrase my argument: That you can't see haze with the naked eye does NOT mean

        • It's a bit more than a couple days. It's not, like, the whole year, but let's not hyperbolize in the other direction and minimize a very real issue. In Canada last year, there were weeks at a time where it was bad for you to go outside. Some jurisdictions were worse than others. I would say that we had anywhere between 4-6 weeks last year during the summer that exercising outside was probably bad for your health (in the Okanagan Valley).

          But something that I find interesting living here is that much of the y

  • WHO set the standard and why?

  • WHO is not credible, and neither is the Guardian. The only takeaway from this "evaluation" is that there is still a lot of PM 2.5 around, but I would put no faith in what countries are singled out nor why.

    • If the Guardian published an article stating that I was on fire, I'd grab a towel and start drying off.

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