Dhaka claimed the undesirable title of the city with the world’s worst air quality, registering an alarming AQI of 313 at 8:31 am this Thursday.
The air quality index labeled the air in Dhaka as “hazardous,” crossing the threshold into a severe health risk category.
According to the AQI scale, a reading between 151 and 200 is deemed “unhealthy,” 201-300 is categorized as “very unhealthy,” and a reading of 301 or more is labeled as “hazardous,” posing serious health threats to the city’s residents.
Following closely behind, India’s Kolkata and Mumbai, Pakistan’s Lahore, and Myanmar’s Yangon secured the second to fifth positions on the list, reporting AQI scores of 225, 197, 191, and 173, respectively.
The AQI serves as a crucial metric for communicating daily air quality, providing insight into the cleanliness or pollution levels in a city and the potential health impacts on its inhabitants.
In Bangladesh, the AQI calculation involves monitoring five pollutants: particulate matter (PM10 and PM2.5), NO2, CO, SO2, and ozone.
Dhaka has long grappled with air pollution challenges, experiencing a decline in air quality during winter and an improvement during the monsoon season.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), air pollution is a global threat, causing an estimated seven million deaths annually. The primary contributors to this mortality are stroke, heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, lung cancer, and acute respiratory infections.
