IQAir report shows the best and worst places for air quality in 2021

Cnn
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Air pollution increased at unhealthy levels worldwide in 2021, according to a new report.

THE Report by iqarA company following global air quality, noted that average annual air pollution in all countries – and 97% of cities – exceeded the Air quality directives of the World Health Organizationwhich have been designed to help governments develop regulations to protect public health.

Only 22 cities of the 6,475 analyzed had an average air quality that responded to WHO. Three territories were found for having respected the WHO directives: the French territory of New Caledonia and the American territories of Puerto Rico and the American Virgin Islands.

India, Pakistan and Bangladesh were one of the countries with the worst air pollution, exceeding directives of at least 10 times.

The Scandinavian countries, Australia, Canada, Japan and the United Kingdom have ranked among the best countries for air quality, with average levels that have exceeded the directives of 1 to 2 times.

In the United States, Iqair noted that air pollution had exceeded the WHO directives from 2 to 3 times in 2021.

“This report underlines the need for governments around the world to help reduce world air pollution,” CNN Glory Dolphin Hammes told IQAir North America. “(Fine particles) kills far too many people each year and governments must establish more strict national air quality standards and explore better foreign policies that promote better air quality.”

Above: Iqar has analyzed the average annual air quality for more than 6,000 cities and classified them from the best air quality, in blue (responds to the PM2.5 guildline) to the worst, in purple (exceeds the WHO of the PM2.5 directives of more than 10 times). A interactive card is available from Eand.

This is the first major worldwide air quality report based on which is new Annual air pollution guidelineswho were Updated in September 2021. The new guidelines have half the acceptable concentration of fine particles – or PM 2.5 – from 10 to 5 micrograms per cube meter.

PM 2.5 is the smallest polluting still among the most dangerous. When inhaled, it moves deep into the pulmonary tissue where it can enter the blood circulation. It comes from sources such as the burn of fossil fuels, dust storms and forest fires, and has been linked to a certain number of health threats, especially asthma,, heart disease and other respiratory diseases.

Millions of people die every year from air quality problems. In 2016, around 4.2 million premature deaths were associated with fine particles, according to the WHO. If the 2021 guidelines had been applied that year, which found that there could be nearly 3.3 million deaths linked to less pollution.

IQAir analyzed pollution surveillance stations in 6,475 cities in 117 countries, regions and territories.

In the United States, air pollution increased in 2021 compared to 2020. Over 2,400 American cities Analyzed, Los Angeles Air remained the most polluted, despite a decrease of 6% compared to 2020. Atlanta and Minneapolis saw significant increase In pollution, the report has shown.

“The dependence (of the United States) with regard to fossil fuels, the increase in the severity of forest fires as well as the variable application of the Clean Act from administration to administration have all added to American air pollution,” the authors wrote.

Researchers say that the main sources of pollution in the United States were fossil transport, energy production and forest fires, which wreaked havoc on the most vulnerable and marginalized communities in the country.

“We are strongly dependent on fossil fuels, in particular in terms of transport,” said Hammes, who lives a few kilometers from Los Angeles. “We can act intelligently on this subject with no emission, but we still do not do it. And that has a devastating impact on air pollution that we see in big cities.”

Forest fires fed with climate change played an important role in reducing air quality in the United States in 2021. Wafted Smoke to the East Coast in July.

China – which is one of countries with the worst air pollution – has shown an improvement in air quality in 2021. More than half of the Chinese cities analyzed in the ratio have seen lower air pollution levels compared to the previous year. The capital of Beijing continued a tendency to five years of improvement in air quality, according to the report, due to a Politicians polluting industries of the city.

The report also revealed that the Amazon RainforestWho had acted as the main world defender against the climate crisis, emitted more carbon dioxide he absorbed last year. Deforestation And forest fire threatened the critical ecosystem, polluted air and contributed to climate change.

“All this is part of the formula that will lead or lead to global warming.” Said Hammes.

The report has also unveiled certain inequalities: surveillance stations remain rare in certain developing countries in Africa, South America and the Middle East, resulting in a shortage of air quality data in these regions.

“When you don’t have this data, you are really in the dark,” said Hammes.

Hammes noted that the African country of Chad was included in the report for the first time, due to an improvement in its surveillance network. Iqar has noted that the country’s air pollution was the second highest in the world last year, behind Bangladesh.

Tarik Benmarhnia, an epidemiologist of climate change at the Institution of Oceanography scripps who studied the impact on the health of the forest smoke, also noted that the fact of relying only to the surveillance stations can lead to dead angles in these reports.

“I think it’s great that they count on different networks and not just government sources,” CNN Benmarhnia told CNN, who was not involved in this report. “However, many regions do not have enough stations and alternative techniques exist.”

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded in its 2021 report This, in addition to slowing down the speed of global warming, reducing the use of fossil fuels would have the additional advantage of improving air quality and public health.

Hammes said that the IQAir report is even more the reason why the world sevra of fossil fuel.

“We have the report, we can read it, we can internalize it and really devote to measures,” she said. “There must be a major evolution towards renewable energies. We must take drastic measures to reverse the wave of global warming; Otherwise, the impact and the train on which we are (will be) irreversible. ”