New Delhi: In a recent report published by the World
Health Organization (WHO) on Thursday, it was said that 11 out of 20 most
polluted cities are in India. New Delhi, which was long been considered as the
world’s most polluted city, dropped its position to 11th. The first
place was grabbed by Zabol, an Iranian city that was said situated amid a ‘dust
ball.’ In the second and third place it is Gwalior and Allahabad respectively.
Reports are that WHO have considered the level of
Particulate Mattter (PM) in air to decide the amount of pollution in air. While
Delhi’s data was gathered from 2013, information for the other Indian cities’ was
collected from 2012. The national capital’s pollution has improved slightly.
The WHO report also asserted that over 80 percent of
the urban population in the world breathes poor air quality, increasing their
risk for lung cancer, skin disease and other life-threatening diseases. Also,
the urban residents in poorer countries, with low and middle income, by far are
the worst affected and had failed to meet the UN’s standards. That number
falls to 56% of cities in wealthier countries.
Director General of the Delhi based air pollution
advocacy group, the Centre for Science and Environment, Sunita Narain noted
that Uttar Pradesh had four of the world’s most polluted cities- Allahabad,
Kanpur, Firozabad and Lucknow.
Bihar has Patna in the sixth position,
Chhattisgarh’s capital Raipur is the seventh. WHO have measured the air
pollution level at 1600 cities: “Probably some the most polluted ones in the
world are not included in our list, just because they are so bad that they do
not even have a good system of monitoring of air quality,” Maria Neira, head of
public health, environmental and social determinants of health at the WHO,
said.
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