14 out of the 20 most polluted cities in the world are in India

PM2.5 Avg Comparisons in winter and summer months in WHO’s 14 Most Polluted Cities

Compiled by Climate Trends

New Delhi, 30 October. According to the World Health Organisation’s report 14 out of the 20 most polluted cities in the world are in India. The air pollution related mortality and disease burden India faces is also the highest in the world. More than 2 million deaths occur in India prematurely every year, accounting for 25% of the global deaths due to poor air quality.

The analysis below indicates the severe and persisting nature of the problem across cities in the Indo-Gangetic Plain. While Delhi tops the charts as per the used datasets, it is important to note that for more than 20 percent of the days, the data was not available during the months of October 2017 – January 2018.

Apart from Delhi, in most cities the online monitoring was happening with less than 4 monitoring stations and Srinagar had none. Delhi has close to 40 monitoring stations that display data online every day.

Most cities, unlike Delhi do not have an emergency response plan to tackle air pollution. While some of the cities like Patna and Varanasi have recently formulated action plans, there are none in place to issue advisories or mitigate the pollution at the source level instantly as in the case of the Graded Response Action Plan.

The summer-time pollution too this year was rampant as the regions around Delhi and NCR experienced dust storms coupled with problems of pollution at the local level.

The Graded Response Action Plan in cities like Delhi is only being implemented during the winter months while the pattern of pollution is clearly indicating that there is a problem throughout the year.

The air monitoring exercise conducted by Hazards Centre, New Delhi in 2017 (winter months) concluded that the Particulate Matter pollution monitored over 15 different locations across the capital for more than three months in a row using the peak flow tests on a sample size of 343 individuals had 80 percent of the sample with unhealthy or below normal lung functioning.

The sample population was under thirty years of age, which indicates a dire state of lung health in those living in Delhi, while on the other hand there is hardly any such data available in other cities in the NCR region and in cities like Kanpur or Gaya.

Based on the available online data from the Central Pollution Control Board, the PM2.5 levels for the months of Oct 2017 - Jan 2018 and May – June 2018 are as follows:

14 most polluted cities	PM 2.5 levels Oct-Jan 2017
Agra	135
Delhi	293
Faridabad	197
Gaya	155
Gurugram	135
Jaipur	61.4
Jodhpur	120
Kanpur	178
Lucknow	145
Patna	148
Varanasi	173
Patiala	114
Muzaffarnagar	109
14 most polluted cities	PM 2.5 levels May-June 2018
Agra	99
Delhi	119
Faridabad	100
Gaya	109
Gurugram	111
Jaipur	87
Jodhpur	99
Kanpur	114
Lucknow	107
Patna	90
Varanasi	89
Patiala	67
Muzaffarnagar	89

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