Ghaziabad second most polluted city in the world, Delhi the most polluted capital

New Delhi : Pollution is one of the top most challenges for India as twenty-two of the world’s 30 most polluted cities are in India. Delhi has been ranked as the most polluted capital city globally, a new report said today.

This report which has been released globally is prepared by Swiss organisation, IQAir, in the form of the ‘World Air Quality Report, 2020’.

However, the report shows that Delhi’s air quality improved by approximately 15 percent from 2019 to 2020. Despite the improvement, Delhi ranked as the 10th most polluted city and the top polluted capital city in the world.

The report said that “India continues to feature prominently at the top of the most polluted cities ranking, with 22 of the top 30 most polluted cities globally”.

The 21 other Indian cities besides Delhi among the 30 most polluted cities in the world are Ghaziabad, Bulandshahar, Bisrakh Jalalpur, Noida, Greater Noida, Kanpur, Lucknow, Meerut, Agra and Muzaffarnagar in Uttar Pradesh, Bhiwari in Rajasthan, Faridabad, Jind, Hisar, Fatehabad, Bandhwari, Gurugram, Yamuna Nagar, Rohtak and Dharuhera in Haryana, and Muzaffarpur in Bihar.

The top most polluted city is Xinjiang in China followed by nine Indian cities.

Ghaziabad is the second most polluted city in the world followed by Bulandshahar, Bisrakh Jalalpur, Noida, Greater Noida, Kanpur, Lucknow and Bhiwari.

Major sources of India’s air pollution include transportation, biomass burning for cooking, electricity generation, industry, construction, waste burning and episodic agricultural burning.

The report said that “The transportation sector is one of the major contributors to India’s leading PM2.5 emission sources across cities.”

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