The list of top 50 most polluted cities in the world includes a total of 35 cities of India and it also including 14 in Uttar Pradesh. The Swiss organization IQAir prepared the World Air Quality Report. According to that report, the most polluted place in the world is Bhiwadi that is in Rajasthan, India followed by Ghaziabad in Uttar Pradesh that also is in India.
It has been reported that Ghaziabad has PM2.5 levels of 102 g/m3. It is 20 times higher than the limit that is accepted. The world’s most polluted city Bhiwadi had an annual PM2.5 average of 106 g/m3 in 2021 and Lucknow had an annual PM 2.5 average level of 86 g/m3 in 2021. It ranks 16th in the top 50 list and 12th in the most polluted cities in the Central and South Asia with.
35 Indian cities that included in the top 50 list are: Bhiwadi, Ghaziabad, Delhi, Jaunpur, Noida, Baghpat, Hisar, Faridabad, Greater Noida, Rohtak, Lucknow, Jind, Gurugram, Kanpur, Muzaffarpur, Varanasi, Bulandshahr, Meerut, Kadaura, Patna, Dharuhera, Durgapur, Amroha, Charkhi Dadri, Agra, Yamuna Nagar, Muzaffarnagar, Alampur, Ludhiana, Sonipat, Kurukshetra, Jodhpur, Singrauli, Ankleshwar, Ambala.
The IQAir surveyed the pollution data in 6,475 cities around the world. Then it published the report and revealed that not a single country is there in the report that are managed to meet the World Health Organization’s (WHO) air quality standard in 2021. Even in the some countries the pollution increased again.
As per the latest guidelines by the WHO for September 2021, the accepted good air quality as per PM2.5 should be between 0-5 g/m3. But all of the countries are 10 times higher than that approved limits.
The major source of that are involved in India’s air pollution are vehicular emissions, industrial waste, electricity generation, construction sector, biomass combustion for cooking and crop burning.
According to the report the most polluted countries in the world are: Bangladesh, Chad, Pakistan, Tajikistan, India, Kyrgyzstan, Bahrain, Iraq and Nepal.