Kyrgyzstan takes 7th place out of 117 in air pollution ranking in 2021

Kyrgyzstan took the 7^th place out of 117 countries in terms of air pollution. Such data are provided on the website of the Swiss monitoring company IQAir.

At the same time, Bishkek was ranked 105^th among the cities of the world and 9^th among the capitals. The average annual concentration of PM2.5 is exceeded from seven to ten times.

Osh took the 55^th place among cities. The average annual concentration is exceeded more than ten times in the city.

Organization notes that no country in the world managed to achieve the World Health Organization air quality standard in 2021. The analysis covered 6,475 cities. In some regions, air pollution has already returned to its previous pre-COVID-19 pandemic level.

The WHO recommends that annual average amount of fine and dangerous airborne particles known as PM2.5 should not exceed 5 micrograms per cubic meter. The analysis showed that only 3.4 percent of the settlements met this standard. PM2.5 concentrations in 93 cities exceeded the threshold ten times.

The worst air pollution situation is in India, where air quality deteriorated even more in the last year. New Delhi is recognized as the most polluted capital in the world, and the overall level of pollution worsened in India in 2021. Bangladesh takes the 1^st place in terms of concentration of harmful substances in the atmosphere. The African Republic of Chad takes the second place.

China dropped from 14^th to 22^nd place over the past year with an average PM2.5 concentration of 32.6 micrograms per cubic meter of air. Along with this, the Chinese city of Xinjiang was in the top three most polluted cities on the planet after the Indian Bhiwadi and Ghaziabad cities.