Swiss technology company IQAir has released its World Air Quality Report 2023. It estimated the level of PM2.5 air pollution in 7,812 cities in 134 countries and territories. To do this, experts analyzed data from more than 30 thousand monitoring stations.
In Uzbekistan, air quality was studied only in Tashkent city. According to IQAir, the average annual concentration of PM2.5 in the Uzbek capital was at 28.6 μg/m3, which is by 5-7 times higher than the recommendations of the World Health Organization (WHO).
In the ranking of world’s most polluted capitals , Tashkent was placed in 22nd place, which is in the Red category with harmful air.
The top five most polluted capitals were New Delhi (India) – 92 µg/m3, Dhaka (Bangladesh) – 80.2 µg/m3, Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso) – 46.6 µg/m3, Dushanbe (Tajikistan) – 46 µg/m3 and Baghdad (Iraq) – 45.8 µg/m3.
In 2023, only in the capitals of seven countries – Puerto Rico, New Zealand, Australia, Iceland, Bermuda, Estonia and Finland met the WHO standards (5 μg/m3) .