Most Polluted US Cities Are In California, Indiana, Kentucky: WHO Report

The World Health Organization (WHO) published a survey titled “Global Urban Ambient Air Pollution Database,” on Tuesday, according to which multiple cities in California, Indiana, Kentucky and Missouri are the most polluted ones in the United States.

Despite the fact that WHO collected data for the survey from different sources, which makes it impossible to rank the cities according to the rate of pollution, it was seen that Los Angeles, Bakersfield, Fresno, Mira Loma, Calexico and Napa, in California; Indianapolis, the Elkhart-Goshen area and Gary in Indiana; Louisville in Kentucky; and St. Louis in Missouri are on the more polluted side.

On the other hand, cities which made it to the cleaner air list were, Eureka-Arcata-Fortuna area of California; Battlement Mesa, Colorado; Wasilla, Alaska; Gillette, Wyoming; and Kapaa, Hawaii, and Arizona.

"I'm afraid what is dramatic is that air pollution levels still remain at dangerously high levels in many parts of the world," Dr. Maria Neira, director of the WHO's Department of Public Health, Environmental and Social Determinants of Health, said of the study, CNN reported. "No doubt that air pollution represents today not only the biggest environmental risk for health, but I will clearly say that this is a major, major challenge for public health at the moment and probably one of the biggest ones we are contemplating."

"Many of the world's megacities exceed WHO's guideline levels for air quality by more than five times, representing a major risk to people's health," Neira added. "[This is] a very dramatic problem that we are facing now."

However, pollution in the U.S. cities did not compare to the situation in Asian and African cities, where 90 percent of pollution-related deaths occur. Particle pollution is known to lead to health conditions such as lung cancer, heart disease, stroke and chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder (COPD). Air pollution was linked to 4.2 million deaths worldwide in 2016.

Cities like Peshawar and Rawalpindi in Pakistan, Varanasi and Kanpur in India; Cairo, Egypt; and Al Jubail, Saudi Arabia, showed record amount of pollution, according to the report.

Apart from carbon, sulfate and nitrate emission from vehicles, another major contributor of air pollution in developing countries was the fact that 40 percent of the population still relied on wood, dung or charcoal in cookstoves or open fires to make meals and heat their homes, due to lack of electricity or gasoline available in the regions.

Data was collected from 4,300 cities and 108 countries for this survey, which made it one of the most comprehensive studies on global pollution in the recent times.

Kevin McConway, an emeritus professor of applied statistics at the Open University in the United Kingdom, said the new study was "generally an impressive piece of work and demonstrated clearly the huge global impact of air pollution. While we do still need to continue to take action on air pollution in richer Western cities like London, the position is far worse in lower- and middle-income countries and in many other parts of the world."