Washington: This week, New York City and the US Northeast experienced days of misery due to the thick, smoky air brought on by Canadian wildfires. However, breathing air that is dangerously polluted is a fact of life — and death — for a large portion of the rest of the world.
Nearly the entire planet occasionally breathes air that is worse than what the World Health Organisation considers to be acceptable. When bad air persists longer than the terrifying shroud that engulfed the US, which typically occurs in developing or recently industrialised countries, the danger increases. According to the UN's health agency, most of the 4.2 million deaths in 2019 that were attributed to outdoor air pollution occurred there.
"Air pollution has no boundaries, and it is high time everyone comes together to fight it," declared Bhavreen Kandhari, co-founder of Warrior Moms in India, an organisation of mothers promoting climate action and clean air in a country with some of the consistently worst air in the world. We should all be shocked by what we are witnessing in the US.
According to Jeremy Sarnat, an environmental health professor at Emory University's Rollins School of Public Health, this is a serious air pollution incident in the US. However, it is fairly typical of what millions of people around the world go through.
According to the air quality company IQAir, which compiles data from ground level monitoring stations around the world, nine of the ten cities with the highest annual average of fine particulate matter last year were in Asia, including six in India.
Airborne particles or droplets with a diameter of 2.5 microns or less are referred to as fine particulate matter, or PM 2.5. That is much smaller than a human hair, and the particles can enter the lungs deep enough to irritate the eyes, nose, throat, and lungs.
Sajjad Haider, a shopkeeper in Lahore, Pakistan, is 31 years old and commutes to work every day on his motorbike. He protects himself from the city's frequent air pollution by donning a mask and goggles, but his chest congestion, eye infections, and breathing issues worsen as the smog thickens in the winter.
He uses hot water and steam as prescribed by his doctor to clear his chest, but he claims he is unable to heed another piece of advice: refrain from riding his motorbike if he wants to maintain his health.
Without a motorbike, I can't run my business because I can't afford a car, claimed Haider.
Lahore had the highest average level of fine particulate matter in the world last year, with nearly 100 micrograms per cubic metre of air. In contrast, on Wednesday, New York City's concentration peaked at 303.
However, the air in New York is typically at levels that are perfectly safe. The maximum daily exposure allowed by the US Environmental Protection Agency is 35 micrograms, and the maximum daily exposure allowed for longer-term exposure is 12 micrograms. In the previous two years, New York's annual average was 10 or less.
As haze turns the capital's sky grey and hides buildings and monuments, New Delhi, a bustling city of more than 20 million people where Kandhari resides, regularly tops the list of the many Indian cities gasping for breath. It gets worse in the autumn because cooler temperatures and crop residue burning in neighbouring states trap deadly smoke over the city for days or even weeks.
When fireworks are lit during the Hindu festival of Diwali and vehicle emissions combine, the resulting haze causes coughing fits, headaches, flight delays, and traffic jams. Government officials occasionally ask citizens to work from home or carpool; some educational institutions have gone online; and families who can afford them are buying air purifiers.
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According to daily data from the majority of air quality monitoring organisations, New Delhi was still the second-most polluted city in the world on Thursday even though a dangerous haze disrupted life for millions across the US.
Kandhari, whose daughter had to stop participating in outdoor activities due to health concerns linked to the poor air, claimed that although air pollution is constant, policymakers only seem to pay attention to it when it is most severe. She insisted that must change. When it comes to having access to cleaner air, we shouldn't make any compromises, Kandhari said.
Sandstorms in the Sahara Desert frequently cause poor air quality in many African nations. AccuWeather on Thursday rated countries with dangerous air quality as purple, from Egypt to Senegal. New York and Washington, D.C. received the same rating this week.
Senegal has endured years of unhealthy air. According to Dr. Aliou Ba, a senior Greenpeace Africa campaigner based in the nation's capital of Dakar, the situation is particularly bad in the east of Senegal because desertification, or the Sahara's encroachment onto drylands, transports particles into the area.
It has been years since The Great Green Wall, a massive tree-planting initiative intended to slow desertification, began. But according to Ba, pollution has gotten worse as more cars are on the road and using poor fuel.
When the Clean Air Act was passed in the US in 1970, many smog-filled cities were cleaned up thanks to its restrictions on the majority of air pollution sources. The historic regulation resulted in restrictions on toxic chemicals like mercury, soot, and smog.
However, the environmental laws in many developing and newly industrialised countries are lax or barely enforced. Other factors that contribute to their increased air pollution include their dependence on coal, laxer vehicle emissions regulations, and the use of solid fuels for cooking and heating.
It can be difficult to find a clear blue sky in Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia, the fourth-most populous nation in the world, as a large portion of the pollution comes from power plants and vehicle emissions. It is also one of the top producers of coal in the world.
Residents tried filtering coal dust with a net in one apartment block in the north of the city, between two busy ports where coal is shipped and piled and where factories burn more. It was a failure.
"My family and I frequently experience scratching and coughing," said Cecep Supriyadi, a 48-year-old local. "So, yes, we must be isolated at home when there is a lot of dust entering the flat. Because it feels like a sore throat, itchy skin, and sore eyes when we are outside the house.
In 2021, an Indonesian court ruled that authorities had disregarded citizens' rights to clean air and commanded them to make improvements.
Since Beijing was infamous for its eye-watering pollution that shrouded office towers in haze, diverted flights, and sent the elderly and young to hospitals to be fitted with respirators, China has made improvements. Schools that could afford it installed inflatable covers over sports fields with rotating doors when the air quality was at its worst.
Closing or removing heavy industries from Beijing and the surrounding areas was essential to the improvement. Older cars were taken off the road, and many of them were replaced by electric cars. Although China continues to be the world's largest producer and consumer of coal, hardly any of it is used in daily life. The WHO standard of 10 was exceeded by Beijing's average PM 2.5 reading of 89.5 in 2013, but that number dropped to 58 in 2017 and is now hovering around 30. Hotan was the only city in China to rank among the 10 worst cities for air quality.
Before the government started limiting the number of cars on the roads in the 1990s, Mexico City, which is surrounded by mountains that trap bad air, was one of the most polluted cities in the world.
Pollution levels decreased, but the city's 9 million residents—22 million if you count the suburbs—rarely experience days when the level of pollution is deemed "acceptable." According to the National Institute of Public Health, air pollution causes close to 9,000 fatalities in Mexico City each year. When farmers burn their fields to prepare for planting, it's typically worse in the dry winter and early spring.
Since 2020, the government hasn't released a full-year air quality report, but Mexico City experienced poor air quality on 262 days, or 72% of the year, in that year, which was not particularly bad for pollution because the pandemic reduced traffic.
Intense rains during the summertime help to slightly clean the air in the city. That's what prompted Verónica Tobar to take her two kids to a small playground on Thursday in the Acueducto neighbourhood close to a busy street.
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When we see that the pollution is very bad, we don't come," Tobar said. "You feel it in your eyes, you cry, they're itchy," she said of those days. Her son was given an asthma diagnosis last year, and temperature changes exacerbate his condition.
Tobar said, "But we have to get out, we can't be locked up," as her kids slid down a slide.