Delhi emerged as the world’s most polluted capital for the fourth year in a row in 2021, and India had 35 of the world’s 50 cities with the worst air quality last year. This has been claimed in a new report. This report has been prepared by the Swiss organization ‘IQAir’ and it was released globally on Tuesday. According to the report, no city in India could meet the air quality standard (PM-2.5 concentration of five micrograms per cubic meter) set by the World Health Organization in 2021.
This report, which describes the state of air quality globally in 2021, is based on data related to the presence of PM-2.5 fine particles in the climate of 6,475 cities in 117 countries. In this, Dhaka (Bangladesh) is second, Enzamina (Chad) third, Dushanbe (Tajikistan) fourth and Muscat (Oman) fifth in the list of most polluted capitals.
According to the report, the level of PM-2.5 fine particulate matter in New Delhi has increased by 14.6 percent in 2021 and has increased from 84 micrograms per cubic meter in 2020 to 96.4 micrograms per cubic meter in 2021. The report also revealed that 48 percent of the cities had PM-2.5 particulate matter levels in excess of 50 micrograms per cubic metre, which is ten times the norm set by the WHO.
Avinash Chanchal, Campaign Manager, Greenpeace India, commented on the recent figures of ‘IQAir’, saying that the report is an eye-opener for governments and corporations. “This once again proves that people are breathing dangerously polluted air,” he said. Vehicular emissions are one of the major factors contributing to the heavy presence of PM-2.5 particles in the city’s climate. The report also states that in 2021 globally, no country threatened the WHO standard and only three countries in the world fulfilled it.