How polluted is your air?

Discover the current AQI (Air Quality Index) of the closest station to your city.

Air pollution

What is it?

Air pollution can be created by both manmade and natural sources. Natural sources include windblown or kicked-up dust, dirt and sand, volcanic smoke, and burning materials. Manmade sources, meaning that pollution is created by the actions of human beings, tend to be the leading contributor to air pollution in cities and are inherently more able to be influenced by regulations.Those human sources primarily include various forms of combustion, such as from gas-powered transportation (planes, trains, and automobiles) and industrial businesses (power plants, refineries, and factories), biomass burning (the burning of plant matter or coal for heating, cooking, and energy), and agriculture.

air pollution

Air pollution is one of the world’s leading risk factors for health.
It is attributed to 11.65% of death globally, which equates to millions of people each year.

ourworldindata.org

Worst AQI average 2022

(source IQAIR)
RankCountryAQI
1
ChadChad
89.7
2
IraqIraq
80.1
3
PakistanPakistan
70.9
4
BahrainBahrain
66.6
5
BangladeshBangladesh
65.8
6
Burkina FasoBurkina Faso
63
7
KuwaitKuwait
55.8
8
IndiaIndia
53.3
9
EgyptEgypt
46.5
10
TajikistanTajikistan
46

Some countries are hit harder than others

The WHO target for air pollution is 0-10 µg/m³. IQ Air, which measures pollution in 109 countries around the globe, considers measurements above 35.5 to be unhealthy for sensitive groups, levels between 55.5 and 150.4 to be unhealthy for all, and anything higher is either very unhealthy (150.5-250.4) or hazardous (250.5 or higher).

“ Covid19 showed part of the world what it's like living with fresh air „

Image one
Image two

Lockdowns cause global air pollution to decline

The global response to the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in unprecedented reductions in economic activity. We find that, after accounting for meteorological variations, lockdown events have reduced the population-weighted concentration of nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter levels by about 60% and 31% in 34 countries, with mixed effects on ozone. Reductions in transportation sector emissions are largely responsible for the NO2 anomalies.