News / NCR most polluted in world, China shows great improvement, says new report

India’s national capital region (NCR) emerged as the most polluted region in the world in 2018, a new pollution report says, with Gurugram, Ghaziabad, Faridabad, Noida, & Bhiwadi in the top six worst-affected cities. Air pollution is likely to cause the death of an estimated seven million lives globally in next year while costing world’s economy nearly $ 225 billion. The situation is increasingly grim for south asia.

India’s national capital region (NCR) emerged as the most polluted region in the world in 2018, a new pollution report says, with Gurugram, Ghaziabad, Faridabad, Noida, and Bhiwadi in the top six worst-affected cities.

Worryingly, air pollution is likely to cause the death of an estimated seven million lives globally in the next year while costing the world’s economy nearly $ 225 billion, said the report which was released Tuesday morning in Jakarta and shared with HT, Beijing.

The situation is increasingly grim for south Asia, the report said.

Of the 20 most polluted cities in the world last year, 18 were in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, the study found.“China’s skies remain gray but progress is impressive,” the report said.

“Average concentrations in the cities in China fell by 12% from 2017 to 2018. Beijing ranks now as the 122nd most polluted city in the world, according to the AirVisual dataset, with PM2.5 levels falling more than 40% since 2013. If Beijing’s PM2.5 concentration had stayed at 2013 level, the city would rank as the 21st on the list in 2018,” it added.

There are only two Chinese cities now in the top 20 most polluted, Hotan and Kashgar, both in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) in northwest China.

“The new data reveals the true scale of South Asian air pollution crisis: out of 20 most polluted cities in the world, 18 are in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. The data also exposes nine South Asian cities that are even worse than Delhi,” the report said.

The latest data compiled in the IQAir AirVisual 2018 World Air Quality Report and interactive World’s most polluted cities ranking, prepared in collaboration with Greenpeace Southeast Asia, reveals the state of particulate matter (PM2.5) pollution in 2018.