The 10 Most Air-Polluted Cities in the World
By Bryan Walsh | @bryanrwalsh | September 27, 2011
Ulan Bator, Mongoliathe second-most polluted city in the world. Credit: Doug Kanter / Bloomberg / Getty Images
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.
Thats 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 therepoorer countries tend to have dirtier cars, factories and power plants, and rarely have or enforce the kind of environmental regulations that haveover the course of decadesbecome common in the developed world. But whats interesting is that the urban areas with the worst air arent 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.
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Heres the topor rather bottom10:
1. Ahwaz, Iran
2. Ulan Bator, Mongolia
3. Sanadaj, Iran
4. Ludhiana, India
5. Quetta, Pakistan
6. Kermanshah, Iran
7. Peshawar, Pakistan
8. Gaberone, Botswana
9. Yasouj, Iran
10. Kanpor, India