Air Quality Is Bad Pretty Much Everywhere, New World Pollution Report Finds
The rules of survival are simple: humans can live weeks without food, days without water, but only minutes without air. Air is the most vital resource to human life, and yet what most of the world breathes in every day is dirty.
According to the 2023 World Air Quality Report published on Tuesday by IQAir, a Swiss firm that monitors real-time air quality around the world and has published an annual assessment since 2018, only 10 countries or territories last year had air quality that met the World Health Organization’s standard for clean air.
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IQAir used as its primary indicator of each country or territory’s air quality the average concentration of PM2.5, or particulate matter with a diameter of 2.5 micrometers or smaller, measured across cities with publicly-available data. PM2.5 is a harmful component of air pollution that comes from a variety of sources, including emissions from coal and oil burning as well as dust storms and wildfires. The WHO says PM2.5 “can penetrate through the lungs and further enter the body through the blood stream, affecting all major organs” and that exposure to PM2.5 can cause cardiovascular and respiratory health issues, such as strokes or lung cancer. Air pollution is associated with an estimated 7 million premature deaths each year.
WHO guidelines recommend exposure to no more than an annual mean PM2.5 concentration of 5 micrograms per cubic meter (5 µg/m3). Of...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Chad de Guzman Tags: Uncategorized News Desk overnight Source Type: news
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