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Only Seven Countries Meet WHO Air Quality Standard, Research Finds (theguardian.com) 23

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.

Only Seven Countries Meet WHO Air Quality Standard, Research Finds More | Reply

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.

    • Don't joke. The USA is the country that's pushing CO2 Cap & Trade as a solution to global heating, & saw Nineteen Eighty-four as an instruction manual rather than a warning.

  • 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.
  • 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
    • 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.

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

    So not enough to pollute.

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