TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - IQAir, a Swiss-based air quality monitoring organization, reported that only seven countries meet international air quality standards. Of the 134 countries and territories surveyed in this report, only seven countries meet the World Health Organization (WHO) guideline limits for small airborne particles emitted by industrial processes, cars, and trucks. The seven countries are Australia, Estonia, Finland, Grenada, Iceland, Mauritius, and New Zealand.

In the IQAir report, the air quality of most areas in Indonesia is still above the WHO safe threshold. The only area that is considered "safe" or within the WHO threshold, is Mamuju, one of the districts in South Sulawesi.

Most countries fail to meet this standard for PM2.5, a type of microscopic soot smaller than the width of a human hair that if inhaled can cause a myriad of health problems. As reported by the British media Guardian, the IQAir report is based on data from more than 30,000 monitoring stations around the world.

Although the world's air is generally much cleaner than it was in the past century, there are still places where pollution levels are dangerously high. According to the IQAir report, the most polluted country is Pakistan, with PM2.5 levels 14 times higher than the WHO standard. Next in line are India, Tajikistan, and Burkina Faso.

Even in wealthy and rapidly developing countries, progress in reducing air pollution is under threat. Canada had the worst PM2.5 count last year due to record wildfires that swept through the country, causing toxic smoke to spread across the country and to its neighbor, the United States.

In China, the IQAir report wrote, air quality improvements were complicated last year by a rebound in economic activity following the Covid-19 pandemic. PM2.5 levels in the country increased by 6.5%. "Unfortunately things have gone backwards," Glory Dolphin Hammes, chief executive of IQAir North America said as quoted by the Guardian.

Air pollution is estimated to kill 7 million people each year worldwide, more than the death toll from AIDS and malaria. The burden is felt most heavily in developing countries that rely on dirty fuels for heating, lighting, and indoor cooking.

The WHO actually lowered its guidelines for "safe" PM2.5 levels in 2021 to five micrograms per cubic meter. But even with this guideline, many countries, such as those in Europe that have cleaned their air significantly in the last 20 years, still fail to reach the safe air threshold.

These stricter guidelines from WHO may not fully cover the risks of harmful air pollution. Research released by United States scientists previously found that there is no safe level of PM2.5.

Hammes said countries must act to make the air cleaner. "We share the atmospheric envelope with everyone else in the world and we need to make sure that we are not doing things that harm those elsewhere," he said.

GUARDIAN | ABDUL MANAN

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