© Harish Tyagi/European Pressphoto AgencyAn aerial view of the Connaught Place area of New Delhi, India, Dec. 8, 2015.
While certainly wretched by American standards, Beijing's average air pollution level is 53, on a scale from 26 to 208. (The numbers reflect the amount of the smog-causing microscopic particles in the air.)
Many of the world's most polluted cities are in India, with Delhi "leading" the pack with a level of 153. The report, which was prepared in 2014 by the World Health Organization, looked at outdoor air pollution in nearly 1,600 cities in 91 countries.
By way of comparison, Los Angeles was at 20 and New York City at 14. The problem in Beijing is that while its overall average may not be catastrophic, when the smog gets bad it can be really dreadful, as evidenced by the current air quality reading of 200.
The great majority of cities worldwide exceed WHO's air quality guidelines.
Globally, relatively few of the monitored cities currently meet the WHO guideline values, the WHO said. These tend to be clustered in high-income countries. Air quality is poorest in the eastern Mediterranean and Southeast Asian regions, followed by Latin America and Africa.
Only 12% of the people living in cities reporting on air quality live in cities that meet with WHO guideline levels, the report said.
A list of the world cities with highest pollution levels:
Rank, city, country, pollution level
1 Delhi, India 153
2 Patna, India 149
3 Gwalior, India 144
4 Raipur, India 134
5 Karachi, Pakistan 117
6 Peshawar, Pakistan 111
7 Rawalpindi, Pakistan 107
8 Khormabad, Iran 102
9 Ahmedabad, India 100
10 Lucknow, India 96
11 Firozabad, India 96
12 Doha, Qatar 93
13 Kanpur, India 93
14 Amritsar, India 92
15 Ludhiana, India 91
16 Idgir, Turkey 90
17 Narayonganj, Bangladesh 89
18 Allahbad, India 88
19 Agra, India 88
20 Khanna, India 88
Source: World Health Organization
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