The Briefing Room

General Category => World News => Topic started by: PeteS in CA on March 17, 2021, 04:30:26 pm

Title: Report: South Asia Dominates Top 20 of World’s Most Polluted Cities
Post by: PeteS in CA on March 17, 2021, 04:30:26 pm

Report: South Asia Dominates Top 20 of World’s Most Polluted Cities

https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2021/03/16/report-south-asia-dominates-top-20-worlds-most-polluted-cities/ (https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2021/03/16/report-south-asia-dominates-top-20-worlds-most-polluted-cities/)

Quote

A study released by Swiss air-quality watchdog group IQAir on Tuesday found New Delhi, India, was the world’s most polluted capital city for the third year running, and South Asia overall had some of the worst air quality ever recorded.

Reuters dourly noted New Delhi’s particulate matter concentrations were “more than double the level of Beijing,” which is currently the 14th most polluted city on Earth. India’s pollution declined by 11 percent due to the coronavirus lockdowns, but it was still the third most-polluted country, right behind Bangladesh and Pakistan.
...
Not all of this pollution was due to industrial byproducts, as IQAir noted a good deal of Delhi’s pollution this winter came from massive farm fires in Punjab.

In a similar vein, China still has the world’s most polluted city, Hotan, but the report blamed “sandstorms exacerbated by climate change” for the high particle concentrations in Hotan’s air. Climate change was also blamed for “high pollution levels in California, South America, Siberia, and Australia.”

Title: Re: Report: South Asia Dominates Top 20 of World’s Most Polluted Cities
Post by: Sled Dog on March 17, 2021, 10:36:42 pm

It's also where all the plastic in the middle of the Pacific came from.

Title: Re: Report: South Asia Dominates Top 20 of World’s Most Polluted Cities
Post by: PeteS in CA on March 17, 2021, 11:22:10 pm

Since the Indus and Ganges flow into the Indian Ocean I doubt that plastics washed from India and Pakistan end up in the Pacific Ocean. But from China's Huang He and Yangzi and other Rivers, yeah.

Hotan is in Xinjiang "province", the westernmost "province" of China. The sand storms are more likely the result of local climate change and desertification due to cutting down trees and such. Large scale tree-cutting also caused local climate change in Qinghai Province, and is being reversed by several years of a mass tree planting program.