Air Pollution Has Reached Unimaginable Levels, WHO Report

Are you among the 3.9 billion people in this world who live in a city? You might just breathe polluted air, according to the latest report of the World Health Organization’s (WHO).

Not only are you inhaling toxic air, but you’re more likely to develop asthma or heart disease. WHO estimates that more than 80 percent of those living in urban settings exposed to air quality levels that don’t meet WHO’s limits.

The latest Global Urban Ambient Air Pollution report doesn’t bode good news, showing a dramatic difference between poorer and wealthier cities. Among low- and middle-income countries, 98 percent of their cities have heavily polluted air while the percentage drops to 56 in cities of high-income countries.

All of the 3,000 cities included in the report are have populations over 100,000, and WHO has collected information about their air quality. The organization is also responsible for setting air quality guidelines to help keep the level of air pollution under the limit.

This means local authorities are encouraged to take action, because the fine particulate matter that pollutes the air has the potential to pose serious health risk to the cities’ inhabitants, including premature death from asthma, lung cancer, and other diseases.

According to a recent study, air pollution plays a significant role in the death of 5.5 million people annually. Since most of this awful business is not caused by the actions of individuals, the responsibility of air quality control falls on the shoulders of governments.

But there’s also some good news: if concerned governments step up and take action, it’s fairly easy for these cities to increase their air quality.

The report also included data showing that over the 5 years, “more than 50 percent of the cities in high-income countries and more than 33 percent of the cities in low- and middle-income countries [..,] reduced their air pollution levels by more than 5 percent.”

WHO revealed that cities in the Southeast Asian regions and in the eastern Mediterranean have the worst air globally, where air pollution levels exceed five to 10 times the limits set by the organization.

Even though the worst air is usually found in the biggest cities on the globe, there are also smaller cities – like Onitsha, a Nigerian city with a population of 350,000 – which also top the list.
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Nancy Young

When I was younger I used to spend almost all of my free time playing computer games. My mom and dad would go mental over this. “You’re never going to do anything with your life if you are going to play games all day” they used to say. What was even more unusual was the fact that I played more games than most of the guys in my friend group. Looking back, I have to admit that I probably played a bit too much, but I also learned a lot of great things. When I turned 20 I decided that it was high-time to make some money of my own, but the only jobs I could get were that of waitress or cashier. How exciting. After several excruciating months of serving tables I had a great idea: since I love gaming so much, why don’t I write about it? That’s when I started doing small writing projects on Elance. Eventually, I got an offer for a part-time job. During that time I learned all about content marketing strategies and how search engines work. I started writing about various topics such as technology, health and lifestyle and discovered that I was actually good at it. On November 24, 2014, I became part of the ArgyllFreePress team.