The Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC) has released its annual Air Quality Life Index 2024 report. The report reveals that people in the most polluted regions on Earth are breathing air six times more polluted than the least polluted areas, reducing life expectancy by about 2.7 years in these regions.
There is good news from South Asia: pollution declined by 18% in one year in the region. India’s particulate pollution, too, has declined from 51.3 in 2021 to 41.4 μg/m³ in 2022, which has added one year to the country’s average life expectancy.
In districts home to cities covered by India’s National Clean Air Programme (NCAP), PM2.5 concentrations declined by 19% on average, and in the districts not covered by the programme this stood at 16%.
The report notes that the most significant reductions in particulate pollution in 2022 occurred in the Purulia and Bankura districts of West Bengal and the Dhanbad district of Jharkhand, with pollution levels dropping by over 20 μg/m³ in each of these areas.