Twenty Most Polluted Cities

Beijing had another smog Red Alert day. The smog was so bad recently, that schools were closed and the streets mostly empty. It seems ironic, but the least developed areas of the world are the ones with the most industrial pollution. Their factories are old, they often have no anti pollution devices installed and  dirty coal is often the main source of fuel. Meanwhile, the wealthier industrialized west that produces enormous an mounts of goods, has little air pollution at all.

Amazingly, look at a list  from the World Health Organization of some of the planet's most polluted cities finds that the Chinese capital  of Beijing isn't even in the top 20 for smog. While unimaginably; polluted  by American standards, Beijing's average air pollution level is 53, on a scale from 26 to 208. (The numbers numbers the amount of the smog causing microscopic particles in the air, higher being worst.) Many of the world's most polluted cities are in India, with Delhi leading the pack with a level of 153. This smog report, which was prepared in 2014 by the World Health Organization, looked at outdoor air pollution in nearly 1,600 cities in 91 countries.

By way of comparison, Los Angeles was at 20 and New York City at 14. The problem in Beijing is that while its overall average may not be catastrophic, when the smog gets bad it can be really dreadful, as evidenced by the current air quality reading of 200. That's why the kids were shut out of school recently. So how is the world doing with its smog problem these days? The west is far better off than 50 years ago, with most spots free of any smog problem. But the East is now ravaged by smog, the opposite of 50 years ago when so few Asian or African countries had too few factories and autos to produce a smog problem. That translates to the great majority of cities worldwide exceeding WHO's air quality guidelines.

These worst tend to be clustered in high income areas of the countries. Air quality is poorest in the eastern Mediterranean and Southeast Asian regions, followed by Latin America and Africa.  Only 12% of the people living in cities reporting on air quality live in cities that meet  with WHO guideline levels, the report said. Here is the list of the top 20 cities with the most polluted air.

Rank, city, country, pollution level
1 Delhi, India 153
2 Patna, India 149
3 Gwalior, India 144
4 Raipur, India 134
5 Karachi, Pakistan 117
6 Peshawar, Pakistan 111
7 Rawalpindi, Pakistan 107
8 Khormabad, Iran 102
9 Ahmedabad, India 100
10 Lucknow, India 96
11 Firozabad, India 96
12 Doha, Qatar 93
13 Kanpur, India 93
14 Amritsar, India 92
15 Ludhiana, India 91
16 Idgir, Turkey 90
17 Narayonganj, Bangladesh 89
18 Allahbad, India 88
19 Agra, India 88
20 Khanna, India 88

I don't know about you, but I won't travel to India or Pakistan any time soon.