Consequences of air pollution are more prominent than ever, and these 15 cities with the cleanest air in the world effectively fight against air pollution.
Besides being a major contributor to global warming, studies have shown that air pollution has been connected with increased risks of developing kidney, bladder, colorectal and lung cancer. This study included 600,000 participants in the US and examined mortality from cancer at sites with long-term exposures to three pollutants, namely, PM 2.5, ozone (O3) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2). This is a huge issue since levels of pollution are not coming down and millions of people are exposed to various pollutants.
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So, what city in the world has the worst air quality? Based on World Health Organization’s report, CBC News compiled a list of cities with most polluted air in the world, and according to this report, Zabol in Iran is the city with the worst air quality in the world. This city is often struck by lengthy storms called “120 days of wind” when pollution is 40 times more than normal. India is another country known for very polluted air. However, cities with the cleanest air in India include Madurai, Pondicherry, and Hassan. Pollution free city in the world doesn’t really exist but some of the cleanest air is found in Tasmania. Cape Grim is a remote place in north-west Tasmania where cleanest air in the world was measured. However, pollution is spreading even to these remote parts of the world and Cape Grim measurements also shown an increase in air pollution. It is good to mention that Australia in general, is among the countries with the cleanest air in the world.
Coming back to our list of cities with the cleanest air in the world, it comes as a no surprise that some of them are located in one of these 10 countries with the cleanest air in the world. According to measurements done by World Health Organization and our list of 16 Cleanest Countries in the World, cleanest air in the world in 2016 and 2017 was recorded in Iceland. Countries with vast territory, like the USA, often have both cities with the cleanest air and cities with most polluted air which depends mostly on the geographic position of the city. For example, Visalia-Porterville-Hanford metro area in California’s San Joaquin Valley, ranks as the most polluted area in the US, while Hawaii has very clean air and low levels of pollution. The proximity of industrial plants will contribute to higher pollution levels while cities that are more isolated often tend to have better air quality. Clean water is also a very important factor when judging the “cleanliness” of a certain place and our list of 15 Cities with Cleanest Tap Water in the US in 2017, will help you pinpoint cities with top-quality tap water in America.
Since this is a very broad topic and there are hundreds of thousands of cities around the world, I’ve decided to narrow down the starting point of this research. So, I started off with Insider Monkey’s list of cleanest countries in the world, I already mentioned (since statistics include air pollution as well), which can also be considered as the list of least polluted countries in the world. The next step was to check out the air quality in their largest cities. Furthermore, I used American Lung Association’s report on the state of the air for the year 2017, to check which cities from the United States can qualify for this list. Also, I advised The Telegraph’s article on cleanest capitals in the world and Traveler.com as well. Finally, I singled out a number of cities and ranked them according to the annual mean of particulate matter (PM 2.5) retrieved from Knoema.com which based its calculations on WHO Global Urban Ambient Air Pollution Database. The 15 cities with the best results are on the following list. Furthermore, cities with the lower annual mean of PM 2.5 are placed higher.
So, shall we proceed?
