Delhi, the capital of India, has been ranked as the world’s most polluted capital city.
This was according to a report by a Swiss-based environmental monitoring group, IQAir.
India itself was ranked as the third most-polluted country in the world, with only neighbours Pakistan and Bangladesh ahead of it.
This is a sharp deterioration. As recently as 2022, India was ranked as the world’s eighth most-polluted country.
Globally, air should not have more than 12 to 15 micrograms of fine particulate matter per cubic metre. In India, the average was 54.4 micrograms per cubic metre. Anything above 35 micrograms is considered unsafe.
In Delhi there were 92.7 micrograms per cubic metre, nearly three times the limit of what is considered acceptable.
Only seven countries met the World Health Organisation’s recommendation of five micrograms or lower per cubic metre.