How healthy is the atmosphere in your nation or town? Chances are, it's not healthy enough.

Swiss air quality technology company IQAir launched its 5th yearly evaluation of particulate matter (PM) 2.5 contamination in towns, countries and places around the globe and discovered that only 6 nations complied with the World Health Organization's (WHO) upgraded safe levels of the fatal atmosphere toxin.

"Too many people around the world don't know that they are breathing polluted air," Senior Air Quality Scientist at Greenpeace International Aidan Farrow stated in a press release revealing the information. "Air pollution observes provide hard data that can inspire communities to demand change and hold polluters to account, but when monitoring is unequal or patchy, vulnerable communities can be left with no data to act on. Everyone deserves to have their health protected from air pollution."

2022 World Air Quality Report is finally here! Find out how your country ranks. https://t.co/hz0IAz5qq9 #IQAir # 2022WAQR #airquality #airqualityawareness #cleanair pic.twitter.com/AnAN7UyyhT

-- IQAir (@IQAir) March 14, 2023

The 2022 World Air Quality Report utilized information from more than 30,000 atmosphere quality screens in 7,323 towns and 131 places, areas and nations. The information captured whether levels of PM2.5 were above or below the safe level decreased from 10 to 5 micrograms per cubic meter ( µg/ m3) by the WHO in 2021, based upon growing scientific proof of the health danger of this kind of contamination, which is tiny enough to get in the blood stream from the lungs and harm the heart and other organs. It's approximated that atmosphere contamination direct exposure triggers around 7 million sudden deaths every year.

According to IQAir, the nations with the worst particulate matter atmosphere contamination were:

• Chad, at 89.7 µg/ m3.
• Iraq at 80.1 µg/ m3.
• Pakistan at 70.9 µg/ m3.
• Bahrain at 66.6 µg/ m3.
• Bangladesh at 65.8 µg/ m3.

For towns, the most contaminated in 2022 were.

• Lahore, Pakistan, at 97.4 µg/ m3.
• Hotan, China, at 94.3 µg/ m3.
• Bhiwadi, India, at 92.7 µg/ m3.
• Delhi, India, at 92.6 µg/ m3.
• Peshawar, Pakistan, at 91.8 µg/ m3.

In general, 8 of the 10 most contaminated towns remained in Central or South Asia, and an overall of 118 places and nations-- or 90 percent of those with adequate information-- exceeded the WHO's brand-new health limitations.

The 6 nations with healthy atmosphere according to WHO standards were Australia, Estonia, Finland, Grenada, Iceland and New Zealand. They were joined by 7 areas in the Pacific and Caribbean, as CNN stated.

The information comes about a week after another research study discovered that more than 99 percent of the world's population was breathing unhealthy air. IQAir kept in mind that spaces in observing stay, which is a significant ecological justice problem, because more than 90 percent of atmosphere contamination deaths take place in middle or low income nations.

"With the only real-time, publicly available source of air quality data for the entire country of Chad being provided by a single air quality monitor in the town of N'Djamena, this year the spotlight on global air quality data coverage disparities shines bright on the continent of Africa," IQAir filled in an executive summary.

Air contamination in the U.S. was down in 2022 compared to 2021, mainly since it was a less severe year for wildfires, CNN reported. In general, air contamination was triggered either straight by fossil fuels via automobile and energy emissions or indirectly by smoke from wildfires made more extreme by the climate crisis.

"This is literally about how we as a planet are continuing this unhealthy relationship with fossil fuels," IQAir North America CEO Glory Dolphin Hammes told CNN. "We are still dependent on fossil fuels and fossil fuels are accountable for the majority of air contamination that we encounter on this planet.".