According to World Health Organization, 92% of the world’s population are living with unsafe levels of air pollution, and more than 7 million premature deaths annually are linked to polluted air. It was estimated that the world’s population had reached 7.8 billion as of March 2020. However, over 70 percent of the world’s population live in the top 20 most populous countries. Thus, it may be important to directly compare air quality among these countries.
On 25 February 2020, the 2019 World Air Quality Report was published by IQAir. This report presents PM2.5 data made publicly available during 2019 to highlight the state of particulate pollution around the world. Extracted from this report, the PM2.5 data for the top 20 most populous countries were compared in the following chart.
(Average annual PM2.5 concentration in top 20 most populous countries in 2019. Data source: IQAir)
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