New Delhi has been declared as the most polluted capital in the world, while Gurugram is the most polluted city.
Greenpeace Southeast Asia conducted a survey and compiled data in the IQ Air Visual 2018 World Air Quality Report and interactive world’s most polluted cities ranking.
New Delhi was ranked as the most polluted capital, while Dhaka ranked the second-most polluted capital and then came Kabul.
The PM2.5 reading in Delhi had an average of 113.5 micrograms per cubic metre.
For the city based ranking Gurugram ranked on the top the PM2.5 reading was 135.8 micrograms per cubic metre, Ghaziabad ranked second with 135.2 micrograms per cubic metre and Faisalabad in Pakistan is third with 130.4 micrograms per cubic metre.
Faridabad, Bhiwadi and Noida take the next three spots.
Out of 20 most polluted cities in the world, 18 are in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Strangely the top 15 most cleanest cities in South Asia were in Iran.
According to the National Ambient Air Quality Standards the permissible limit for PM2.5 is 40 micrograms per cubic metre, but the World Health Organization put it even lower at 10 micrograms per cubic metre.
