While north Indian cities like Delhi, Ghaziabad, and Kanpur are notorious for their air pollution, almost everyone living in India breathes air dirtier than what the World Health Organisation (WHO) has deemed safe.
According to the Air Quality Life Index (AQLI) 2025 annual update, all of India lives in areas where the annual average particulate pollution level (PM2.5) exceeds the WHO annual average limit of 5 μg/m³. The country’s northern plains however remain the greater offenders, exposing an estimated 544.4 million people to bad air.
The AQLI report is based on global pollution data from 2023. Atmospheric pollution levels rose planetwide in 2023 following two relatively quiescent years due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The report was put together by the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago. The air quality in India is also bad by its own standards, which are more lenient than those of the WHO. According to the report, 46% of India’s people live in areas where the national annual PM2.5 standard of 40 μg/m3 has been breached.
The report also said Delhi will experience the greatest benefit among India’s cities by lowering particulate pollution to the WHO’s recommendation, adding 8.2 years to life expectancy. Because the whole country currently breathes subpar air, even those in the cleanest areas could live 9.4 months more if their air is cleaned up, the report found.
The problem transcends borders, of course. Emissions from Bangladesh, India, Nepal,and Pakistan have together blanketed a big swath of South Asia with polluted air. Bangladesh in particular has consistently been the most polluted country in the region for years. In 2023, the country’s air had 12x greater PM2.5 concentration than the WHO guidelines — and improving it could add 5.5 years on average to resident Bangladeshis’ lives. The report estimated the potential gain to be highest in Gazipur, where residents could live 7.1 years longer.
China noted a consistent decrease in pollution over the last decade, China, however, has been somewhat of a notable exception: while the concentration of harmful particles in its air grew by 2.8% in 2023, the air quality has been improving for a decade. This isn’t accidental. Even with the 2.8% increase in 2023, the particulate concentration was still 40.8% lower than what it was in 2014. Among other policies, the country has restricted the number of cars on the roads in large cities like Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou; cut its iron- and steel-making capacity; banned new coal plants in specific regions; and replaced coal-based home heating solutions with gas or electric heaters,the AQLI report noted.
Then again, a lot remains to be done. Even if China’s air is cleaner than India’s, the people of China are also exposed to more PM2.5 levels than the WHO’s threshold. Worldwide, the global PM2.5 concentration in 2023 was 1.5% higher than in 2022 and almost 5x times over the WHO limit. Indeed, the report identified particulate pollution as the “greatest external threat to human life expectancy” in 2023. The US and Canada noted the highest country-wise increases in pollution in 2023, thanks in no small part to their vicious wildfire seasons.
Bolivia was the most polluted country in Latin America, and it also made to the top-10most polluted countries in the world for the first time since 2010. Some parts of Africa, particularly in its central and western regions, reported a slight drop in air pollution. However, Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of the Congo continued to suffer, where, per the report, air pollution has become a bigger threat to life than HIV/AIDS, malaria, and dirty water.