Pakistan occupied the third most contaminated country in 2024, when he faced a Smog Record season, while Chad headed the list, according to an annual report published by the Swiss Air Iqair technology company on Tuesday.
Last year, the country witnessed unprecedented SMOG levels, especially in Punjab, where the situation declared a “calamity” and about two million people had to find treatment for the resulting health problems. The Government had taken several steps to combat pollution, including imposing certain locks and closing schools.
According to the 2024 air quality report by Iqair, Chad headed the classifications for the most polluted country in general, followed by Bangladesh, Pakistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and then India in fifth place.
For Pakistan, the average concentration of particles of less than 2.5 microns in diameter (PM2.5) for Pakistan was 73.7 micrograms per cubic meter (μg/m³), almost 15 times more than the safe levels established by the World Health Organization (WHO).
Interestingly, despite the Smog record, Pakistan’s average pollution last year remained the same as in 2023.
In the Central and South Asia region, Pakistan took second place, just behind Bangladesh, with Lahore, Finen, Peshawar and Sialkot among the 15 most contaminated cities in the region.
“Pakistan faces persistently high levels of contamination of various sources, including burning biomass, industrial activities, vehicular emissions, brick ovens and construction dust,” the report said.
Compared to 2023, Peshawar, Islamabad, Rawalpindi and Lahore witnessed an increase in their annual average readings, while Faisalabad saw an insignificant increase.
On the other hand, PM2.5 readings for Karachi decreased from more than 55 micrograms per cubic meter in 2023 to about 46 micrograms per cubic meter in 2024.
The report said that five Pakistani cities saw levels of more than 200 microns during November.
The study was based on “more than 40,000 air quality monitoring stations in 8,954 locations in 138 countries, territories and regions analyzed by scientists of Iqair air quality,” he said.
Around seven out of 10 people in Pakistan faced health problems due to SMOG, according to a report by the International Ipsos information firm.
The readings for Chad were 18 times higher than WHO’s safe levels, while those of India were 10 times more than the recommended limits.
Despite an improvement in 2024, India was also home to six of the nine most contaminated cities in the world, according to the IQair report.
He said that Byrnihat of India was the “most contaminated metropolitan area in the world of 2024”. New Delhi was the most polluted capital in the world, closely followed by N’Djamena de Chad.
Dhaka de Bangladesh was third, ahead of Kinshasa and Islamabad de Congo.
Byrnihat, an industrial city on the border of the states of Meghalaya and Assam, had a reading PM2.5 of 128.2 micrograms per cubic meter on average in 2024, more than 25 times the recommended level of five micrograms.
The concentrations throughout India were 50.6 micrograms per cubic meter, 10 times the safe level of the WHO, according to the IQair report, made with the support of Greenpeace.
The general level was seven percent of 2023, but Indian cities are still seriously suffering from small particles, which come from vehicles, agricultural burning, garbage and industrial waste.
The Skyrochets of the pollution of southern Asia in the winter months, and highlighting the struggle of India, the report said that Baddi in the state of Himachal Pradesh had an average reading of 165 microns in January, 33 times the safe level of the WHO.
“Oceania is the cleanest region in the world, with 57 percent of the regional cities that meet the value of the WHO Annual Guide PM2.5,” the report said.
Bosnia was the best polluted country in Europe, with PM2.5 levels more than five times above the WHO limit. He was followed by Macedonia del Norte and Serbia. Novi Pázar de Serbia was the most contaminated city, according to the report.
Burkina Faso, occupied fifth in 2023, as well as Iran and Afghanistan, were not included in the report due to insufficient data.
Only seven countries had concentrations below the WHO guidelines: Estonia, Iceland, Australia, New Zealand, Bahamas, Granada and Barbados.
However, 17PC of cities studied complied with the WHO standard in 2024, compared to only 9pc in 2023, according to the report.
Air pollution, atmospheric and domestic, was the main environmental risk for health in 2021, responsible for 8.1 million premature deaths worldwide, according to estimates in the report of the “Global Air State 2024” carried out by the Institute of Effects of Health and the Institute of Metric and Health Evaluation.
