Joe McConnell
CNN
—
Air pollution reached harmful levels worldwide in 2021, according to a new report.
The report, from IQAir, a global air quality monitoring company, found that average annual air pollution in every country (and 97 percent of cities) exceeded the World Health Organization’s air quality guidelines, which are designed to help governments develop regulations to protect public health.
Only 222 of the 6,475 cities analyzed had average air quality that met the WHO standard. Three territories were found to meet WHO guidelines: the French territory of New Caledonia and the U.S. territories of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
India, Pakistan and Bangladesh are among the countries with the highest levels of air pollution, exceeding the established limits by at least 10 times.
Scandinavian countries, Australia, Canada, Japan and the United Kingdom ranked among the countries with the best air quality, with average levels that are 1 to 2 times above guidelines.
In the United States, IQAir found that air pollution in 2021 exceeded WHO guidelines by 2 to 3 times.
“This report highlights the need for governments around the world to help reduce global air pollution,” Glory Dolphin Hammes, CEO of IQAir North America, told CNN. “(Fine particulate matter) kills too many people every year, and governments need to set more stringent national air quality standards and explore better foreign policies that promote better air quality.”
Above: IQAir analyzed the annual average air quality for over 6,000 cities and ranked them from best air quality, in blue (meets WHO PM2.5 guidelines) to worst, in purple (exceeds WHO PM2.5 guidelines by more than 10 times). interactive map is available from IQAir.
This is the first major global air quality report based on the WHO’s new annual guidelines on air pollution, updated in September 2021. The new guidelines have halved the acceptable concentration of fine particulate matter, or PM 2.5, from 10 to 5 micrograms per cubic meter.
PM 2.5 is the smallest pollutant, but also one of the most dangerous. When inhaled, it penetrates deep into lung tissue, where it can enter the bloodstream. It comes from sources such as fossil fuel burning, dust storms, and wildfires, and has been linked to a variety of health threats, including asthma, heart disease, and other respiratory illnesses.
Millions of people die each year from air quality problems. In 2016, about 4.2 million premature deaths were associated with fine particulate matter, according to the WHO. If the 2021 guidelines had been implemented that year, the WHO found that there could have been about 3.3 million fewer pollution-related deaths.
IQAir analyzed pollution monitoring stations in 6,475 cities across 117 countries, regions and territories.
In the United States, air pollution increased in 2021 compared to 2020. Of the more than 2,400 U.S. cities analyzed, Los Angeles’ air remained the most polluted, despite seeing a 6% decline from 2020. Atlanta and Minneapolis saw significant increases in pollution, the report showed.
“The United States’ dependence on fossil fuels, the increasing severity of wildfires, and variable enforcement of the Clean Air Act from administration to administration have contributed to U.S. air pollution,” the authors wrote.
Researchers say the main sources of pollution in the United States are fossil-fueled transportation, energy production and wildfires, which cause devastating damage in the country’s most vulnerable and marginalized communities.
“We are so dependent on fossil fuels, especially in terms of transportation,” said Hammes, who lives a few miles from Los Angeles. “We can do this intelligently with zero emissions, but we’re not doing it yet. And that’s having a devastating impact on the air pollution we’re seeing in major cities.”
Climate-driven wildfires played a significant role in reducing air quality in the United States in 2021. The authors highlighted a series of fires that led to dangerous air pollution, including the Caldor and Dixie fires in California, as well as the Bootleg Fire in Oregon, which carried smoke to the East Coast in July.
China, which is among the world’s worst air polluters, showed improved air quality in 2021. More than half of the Chinese cities analyzed in the report recorded lower levels of air pollution than the previous year. The capital Beijing continued a five-year trend of improving air quality, the report said, due to a policy-driven reduction in polluting industries in the city.
The report also found that the Amazon rainforest, which had served as the world’s leading defender against the climate crisis, emitted more carbon dioxide than it absorbed last year. Deforestation and wildfires have threatened the critical ecosystem, polluted the air and contributed to climate change.
“This is all part of the formula that will lead or is leading to global warming,” Hammes said.
The report also highlighted some inequalities: monitoring stations are still scarce in some developing countries in Africa, South America and the Middle East, resulting in a lack of air quality data in those regions.
“When you don’t have this data, you’re really in the dark,” Hammes said.
Hammes noted that the African country of Chad was included in the report for the first time, due to an improvement in its monitoring network. IQAir found that the country’s air pollution was the second highest in the world last year, after Bangladesh.
Tarik Benmarhnia, a climate change epidemiologist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography who has studied the health impacts of wildfire smoke, also noted that relying only on monitoring stations can create blind spots in these reports.
“I think it’s great that they’ve relied on different networks and not just government sources,” Benmarhnia, who wasn’t involved in this report, told CNN. “But a lot of regions don’t have enough stations and there are alternative techniques.”
In its 2021 report, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that, in addition to slowing the rate of global warming, limiting the use of fossil fuels would have the added benefit of improving air quality and public health.
Hammes said IQAir’s report is yet another reason why the world should move away from fossil fuels.
“We have the report, we can read it, we can internalize it and really commit to action,” he said. “We need a big step forward on renewable energy. We need to take drastic action to reverse global warming; otherwise, the impact and the train we’re on (would be) irreversible.”
