
Most polluted cities of 2018 - mikkei
https://www.airvisual.com/world-most-polluted-cities
======
lm28469
In a world where individualism and short term profit is valued above all.

What do you think happens when we buy asian gadgets on amazon with same day
delivery, mindless pollution, from the first step to the last.

Go out, and look at the streets, hundreds of cars with (90% of the time) a
single person in it. Moving 2 tons of steel for a 80 kilos meatbag, now that's
efficiency. We could almost ignore that if it wasn't releasing toxic gases
straight in the worst place possible: the exact place where most of us live.

What about importing bananas and mango from the other side of the globe ? How
come I can buy Evian water in the US; are we really shipping water from Europe
to America ?

Meat at every meal, well meat is good so why not, plus it's cheap now that we
mass produce it.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_meat_p...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_meat_production)

And the list goes on forever, but who cares, convenience is king, as long as
it's cheap.

~~~
geoka9
And the irony is that the people who have kids tend to be the ones who care
the least about these things (whether because for them it's much harder to do
anything about it or because they are ignorant). Talk about loving kids.

~~~
vasco
The people who have kids are also the ones causing the most harm to the
environment. The single most effective way to diminish your impact on the
environment is to not reproduce.

~~~
ComputerGuru
It's also the most selfish way, in some regard. My wife and I just recently
had our first after some time, and one of the biggest factors involved was how
selfish it would be _not_ to. A lot of parents feel the same way; you need to
appreciate that it's not in black and white and there are multiple
perspectives.

~~~
geoka9
The future for them is very bleak. The pros/cons of facing it is a hard
decision to make. Personally, I'd hate to make that decision for someone else,
let alone a person I would end up caring about the most.

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oliv__
Thanks for hijacking my back button

~~~
newscracker
I found that quite irritating too. At first I thought I was doing something
wrong or the browser was not behaving well. Then I realized it's the website
that's hostile.

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fatjokes
How widely known is it that Indian cities are so polluted? I feel like I only
hear about pollution in Chinese cities. I feel like the fact that this is
dominated by Indian cities would come as a surprise to many.

~~~
akeck
It was surprising to me. However, only the first page is dominated by India.
Most of the cities in the next 3-4 pages are in China.

~~~
mikkei
If you look at cities yea but on a country level, India fall third behind
Bangladesh and Pakistan. China is at the 12th place and all the countries in
between are somewhat surprising

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ksynwa
Anyone knows what the major source of pollution in Indian cities is? My guess
would be automobile but I'd like it to be confirmed or denied.

~~~
newusertoday
My guess is manufacturing plants and burning of farm fields.

Reason is i am not seeing other big cities like shanghai/Bombay etc. which
would have comparable number of automobiles but smaller cities which are known
to have big factories.

~~~
Reason077
In many cities, cars contribute relatively less pollution compared to
factories and power plants, but because it’s localised along city streets
where people live and work, it can be just as dangerous.

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ComputerGuru
I was really surprised to see that in my neck of the woods Chicago proper had
better air quality than some of the nearby suburbs (that _aren 't_ industrial
exurbs) such as Naperville: [https://www.airvisual.com/world-most-polluted-
cities?contine...](https://www.airvisual.com/world-most-polluted-
cities?continent=59af928f3e70001c1bd78e4f&country=7KEznm2wS6Zk3chh2&state=AjTsgJokWaAZa4jWb&page=1&perPage=50&cities=)

~~~
xnx
Lake effect?

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ggambetta
I happened to be in San Francisco during the Camp fire late last year. Even
far from the fire itself, the air outside was terrible, and for a week or two
I felt miserable and trapped. Not being able to breathe properly, or open a
window, or go anywhere for days on end wasn't fun.

Most of the cities in that list are just as bad as that, all year round. I
can't even begin to imagine what it feels like to live like that permanently,
or what it does to your health :(

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morgosmaci
All of the US cities in the North America top 50 are rural CA cities. I have
to assume that their over all badness last year was due to the fires.

~~~
codyb
I think it’s actually the agricultural centers. When I visited NAPA valley
when I was younger you could see the smog blanketing the area. Not sure what
exactly smogs up the air so foully there from the agricultural production but
it seems to be a large contributor.

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RcouF1uZ4gsC
If you look at the list of cities, they are mostly in countries that are
undergoing massive industrialization. If you look at the equivalent stage in
the West about a hundred years ago, you would see the New York, Chicago,
London, Pittsburg also with massive pollution. As countries became more
industrialized and wealthy, they switch from caring about growth above all
else, to caring more for quality of life and reducing pollution is a big part
of that. That period occurred for the US in the 60’s and 70’s. You can see
that dynamic already taking hold for example in Beijing where the Chinese
government is trying to reduce its pollution problem by regulating cars and
pushing electric vehicles.

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elboru
Mexico City is in rank 704, I didn't expect that. I don't know if Mexico City
is doing better or if the other 700 cities are nightmares. Well at least the
pollution average in the city went down from 2017 to 2018.

~~~
hombre_fatal
Mexico City makes my nostrils burn much like the airport region of Guadalajara
which sends air quality meters deep into the red zone. On any straight street
in Mexico City, the street will quickly terminate into a grey haze.

Can only imagine how bad the 703 worse-ranked cities are to live in.

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ggregoire
Surprised by the numbers for Mexico City (19.7, 704th). I live there and the
air is disgusting. I can't imagine how bad it must be in all those
Chinese/Indian cities above 100.

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Panino
To give some perspective, Paradise California (which burned to the ground on
Nov. 8 2018) had a PM2.5 measurement that month fairly similar to that of the
world's most polluted cities. That seems so grim to me.

I feel so fortunate seeing this list. The area I live in is almost entirely
blue despite being subjected to bursts of wildfire smoke in summer.

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clausmex
Website breaks Firefox mobile 15.0 on iOS 12

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eatbitseveryday
Why not measure surface area polluted and how much of that is in a country,
rather than very long lists of individual cities?

E.g., China - 100km2, India 500km2 (making up numbers), rather than list 300
cities from each country as nearly equal pollution?

~~~
ubercow13
It seems to be more useful in the current format if you are trying to decide
where (not) to live

~~~
eatbitseveryday
Why pick one city which is clean but maybe 50km from another which is heavily
polluted? I'd rather know pollution like a weather radar shows clouds or cold
fronts... Then I can just eliminate entire regions for where to live.

~~~
mikkei
Like this visualisation you mean ?
[https://www.airvisual.com/earth](https://www.airvisual.com/earth) You can see
the whole world with particulate matters clouds and how they are affected by
the wind.

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wpasc
I was fascinated to see how low New York was. Given the immense amount of car
traffic, anyone have an idea as to why its so low?

~~~
robotresearcher
Because we've worked on improving it for a hundred years. A mixture of
regulations and regulation-driven technology improvements.

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paulsutter
Anyone know why is pollution is worst in winter? heating?

We were in India in the winter, and the smell everywhere was like smoke from
burning.

~~~
snarfy
It's because colder air is more dense, making it more heavy and stay closer to
the ground.

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sabareesh
I always had the question is the source of pollution at least the air quality
is local or can it travel across globe ?

~~~
Nasrudith
Both can happen but pollution is diffused as it travels and spreads. There
were incidents when Chinese smog was bad enough to make it to California and
cause air quality issues but weather can do that in general if winds trap
pollution instead of dispersing.

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calimac
Why is it that the top 100 are all chain in India? And in that case why is it
that the Paris climate accord delayed China and India is accountability while
charging American Germany the highest reparations immediately? The politics
behind climate change is it simply a method of controlling our economy and
taxing us

~~~
ubercow13
This is a ranking of PM2.5 pollution, which is nothing to do with climate
change.

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morningmoon
This website breaks my back button. Yet another website built with JavaScript
that doesn’t need JavaScript at all...

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Brain_Thief
Changing the ranking to the world's most polluted countries really puts into
perspective the ecological destruction wrought by the trend of western
consumerist fetishism (this isn't to say that the destruction of natural
systems is entirely the fault of western citizens, of course).

The top 25 (at least) most polluted countries are all firmly outside what
would be considered the western world; it's obvious that the environmental
byproducts of materialism and consumerism are simply outsourced to where
westerners cannot readily see them. The necessary course of action for an
informed and future-minded person seems blindingly obvious - allocate
resources only to those corporations and systems that reject the trend of
object fetishism and environmental (and social) exploitation.

The classic rebuttal to this stance (i.e., that all corporations naturally
engage in this type of exploitative behavior / the standard of living of the
exploited region's citizens is being raised as a byproduct of said
exploitation / etc.) is ringing more and more hollow. The fact of the matter
is that you don't need a new smartphone / TV / whatever nearly as often as we
are conditioned to believe.

There is a strange (borderline schizophrenic) attitude that I notice among
defenders of entrenched corporate systems (meaning production and consumption
symbioses) wherein the defender of the system simultaneously resigns
themselves to powerlessness in the face of what they claim are the inevitable
(and often negative) byproducts of technological and economic growth and at
the same time admit (directly or indirectly) that they willingly add to the
conflagration under nothing but the threat of relatively minor social
inconvenience (see: Facebook membership, ordering junk from Amazon, using
Google services, etc.). It's tiring and bewildering to witness.

~~~
codyb
Go back 100 years and the world’s most polluted countries would still be the
ones rapidly industrializing at the time.

Your comment seems woefully ignorant of history, which is okay, but the world
hasn’t _just_ existed for the last four decades.

~~~
Brain_Thief
Although I'm detecting a significant amount of hostility and condescension in
your response, I'm going to ask you to elaborate on your position a bit more
since I don't really understand what it is that you're trying to say. What do
historical cycles of industrialization have to do with the observation that
modern, information-rich consumers appear to have a growing moral imperative
to prioritize human rights and positive environmental management when deciding
how to allocate their discretionary resources (time / money)?

