See The Top 10 Polluted Areas In The World.Environmentalists here in the U.S. are not happy with President Obama, in part because he pulled back on a promise to tighten ground-level ozone and smog standards for air pollution. But American greens should remember: much of the rest of the world has it far, far, far worse.
That’s one takeaway from a new report by the World Health Organization that looked at urban air pollution around the world. The most polluted cities tend to be found in developing countries. No surprise there—poorer countries tend to have dirtier cars, factories and power plants, and rarely have or enforce the kind of environmental regulations that have—over the course of decades—become common in the developed world. But what’s interesting is that the urban areas with the worst air aren’t the sort of Dickensian megacities one usually hears about: Beijing, Chongqing, Bangkok, Mexico City. The losers are smaller cities, many of them in Iran or South Asia, and none of them economic dynamos.
1. Ahwaz, Iran
2. Ulan Bator, Mongolia
3. Sanadaj, Iran
4. Ludhiana, India
5. Quetta, Pakistan
6. Kermanshah, Iran
7. Peshawar, Pakistan
8. Gaborone, Botswana
9. Yasouj, Iran
10. Kanpur, India
