According to a recent study, ‘Air Pollution and Health in Cities,’ published by the Health Effects Institute’s (HEI) State of Global Air Initiative, Delhi and Kolkata are the two most polluted cities in the world in terms of average annual population-weighted PM 2.5 exposure.
Mumbai ranked 14th. There are no other Indian cities in the top 20. With 124 attributable fatalities per 100,000 people, Beijing had the highest disease burden associated with PM 2.5-related illness. Kolkata ranked eighth with 99 deaths per 100,000 people, while Delhi ranked sixth with 106 deaths. Five Chinese cities were among the top twenty. The study included 7,000 cities in total, but only 103 of the most populous ones from six regions were considered for the ranking.
Mumbai ranked 14th. There are no other Indian cities in the top 20. With 124 attributable fatalities per 100,000 people, Beijing had the highest disease burden associated with PM 2.5-related illness. Kolkata ranked eighth with 99 deaths per 100,000 people, while Delhi ranked sixth with 106 deaths. Five Chinese cities were among the top twenty. The study included 7,000 cities in total, but only 103 of the most populous ones from six regions were considered for the ranking.
Moscow, Russia, came in second with an average NO2 exposure of 41.6 micrograms per cubic metre (40.2 micrograms per cubic metre). The WHO recommended NO2 exposure level is 10 micrograms per cubic metre. According to the study, 86% of the more than 7,000 cities studied in 2019 had pollution exposure levels above the WHO threshold, affecting approximately 2.6 billion people. According to the study, exposure to PM 2.5 was responsible for 29,900 deaths in Delhi, 21,380 in Kolkata, and 16,020 in Mumbai in 2019. In contrast, PM 2.5 exposure killed 26,270 people in Beijing in 2019.
The study, which looked at data from 2010 to 2019, also discovered significant differences in global exposure patterns for the two main air pollutants, NO2 and PM 2.5. While cities in low- and middle-income countries were found to have higher levels of fine particulate matter, cities in high- and middle-income countries had higher levels of nitrogen dioxide, or NO2. The primary sources of NO2 emissions into the atmosphere are power plants and automobile emissions.
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