Pakistan, Bangladesh and India are among the countries with the most polluted air

Pakistan, Bangladesh and India are among the countries with the most polluted air

According to the latest statistics Pakistan Three of the world’s largest during the year 2023 Smog It was one of the affected countries whose air pollution was almost 15 times higher than the World Health Organisation’s recommended amount.

According to the British news agency Reuters, the data published on Tuesday shows that in the new list Bangladesh And India Also included are Chad and Iran respectively.

The average amount of lung-damaging particulate matter in the air should be 2.5 micrograms per cubic meter (pm) in 2023, rising to 79.9 pm in Bangladesh and 73.7 pm in Pakistan.

According to the recommendation of the World Health Organization, this amount should not exceed five micrograms.

Christie Chester Schroeder, air quality science manager at IQ Air, a Swiss air watchdog, says: ‘In South Asia, you see a 2.5 increase in PM due to climate conditions and geography. Which is too much and the population cannot go anywhere else.’

Factors like agricultural practices, industry and population density are at the top of these, he added. Unfortunately, it looks like it’s going to get worse before it gets better.’

In 2022, Bangladesh was ranked as the country with the fifth worst air quality, while India was ranked eighth.

at the North-South University of Dhaka Air pollution About 20 percent of premature deaths in Bangladesh are due to air pollution and the cost of health-related expenses is equal to four to five percent of the country’s GDP, said MD Feroze Khan, an expert.

India’s pollution spiked last year, with PM2.5 levels nearly 11 times higher than the World Health Organization’s standard of 92.7 micrograms. The Indian city of New Delhi was the most polluted capital.

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PM 2.5 in China also increased by 6.3 percent to 32.5 micrograms last year following five consecutive years of decline.

Only Australia, Estonia, Finland, Grenada, Iceland, Mauritius and New Zealand met the WHO standards in 2023.

The IQAir report is based on data from more than 30,000 monitoring stations in 134 countries and territories.

Chad, the world’s most polluted country in 2022, was left off the 2023 list due to data problems. Iran and Sudan have also been removed from the 2023 list.

Krista Husenkopf, director of the Air Quality Lifetime Index at the University of Chicago’s Energy Policy Institute, says 39 percent of countries have no air quality monitoring.

“Considering the huge potential benefits and relatively low cost, it’s surprising that we don’t have an organized global effort to use resources to make these data into space,” he said. In places where the health burden due to air pollution has been highest.’

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2024-07-20 09:36:57

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