The World Health Organization declared India's capital city New Delhi as having the world's dirtiest air, according to a study report released Wednesday.
Air pollution is responsible for over 5 million deaths worldwide. In an effort to measure air pollution in cities around the world, the World Health Organization (WHO) found that New Delhi has the world's dirtiest air. Beijing's skies were also declared far from clean.
Among the top 20 cities that have the dirtiest air, 13 were Indian including Patna, Gwalior and Raipur. New Delhi had a PM2.5 per cubic metre reading, according to a Reuters report.
Beijing, infamously known for its smog was placed 56th on the list and has an air pollution reading that is one-third of New Delhi's readings. The study took into consideration air pollution data collected between 2008 and 2013.
Officials from India's Air Monitoring center have dismissed the WHO report, calling it "biased" and "misleading."
"We have data for New Delhi which is not biased," Gufran Beig from the state-run System of Air Quality Weather Forecasting and Research (SAFAR) said, according to Hindustan Times. "It takes into account the data taken from 10 air quality monitoring stations spread around the capital in an unbiased way. It is not misleading."
In a recent news release, WHO said that air quality in most cities fail to meet current guidelines for safety levels laid down by the organization. This has put people to further risk of respiratory diseases and other health problems.
"Too many urban centres today are so enveloped in dirty air that their skylines are invisible," said Dr Flavia Bustreo, WHO Assistant Director-General for Family, Children and Women's Health in a statement. "Not surprisingly, this air is dangerous to breathe. So a growing number of cities and communities worldwide are striving to better meet the needs of their residents - in particular children and the elderly."
The United States is sailing on a similar boat as India when it comes to air pollution. In April last month, the American Lung Association reported that though the country's air quality has improved significantly, a whopping 42 percent of the population is still exposed to polluted air.
The report revealed that 131.8 million people in the United States live in regions that have unhealthy levels of either ozone or particle pollution, all year round.
The Guardian reported that according to data collected between 2010 and 2012, 22 of the 25 studied cities had registered high levels of smog. The report highlighted that Los Angeles has the worse air quality in the United States.
The WHO's cancer research agency IARC published a report last year warning that the air we breathe is laced with cancer-causing substances and should be officially classified as carcinogenic to humans. In March this year, the organization released another report highlighting that air pollution was responsible for over 7 million premature deaths in 2012.
In October 2013, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released some pictures that revealed the smog problem in China was so dire that it can be seen from space.
The health consequences of air pollution are several. Exposure to air pollution increases mortality due to heart diseases and is also regarded as a risk factor for stroke. It also increases the risk of asthma, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) and lung cancer.
Statistics from the report revealed that 40 percent of deaths linked to outdoor air pollution were from heart disease; another 40 percent from stroke; 11 percent from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD); 6 percent from lung cancer and 3 percent from acute lower respiratory infections in children.
