28 ms·

Updated WHO global air quality guidelines

166 points by malingo 5y ago

LurkingPenguin 5y ago
I never truly appreciated how valuable good air is until I moved to Asia and experienced weeks at a time living in air with AQIs over 100 and namely high PM2.5 levels. The physical effects of spending even an hour outside are immediately apparent and scary when I contemplate what this would probably do to my health if I rack up years of exposure. It's even scarier to think about children who are exposed to this air from birth and grow up inhaling it every time they walk to school, go outside to play, etc.
- okal 5y ago
  Same here. I live in Nairobi. The air quality here isn't all that good, but I acquired a newfound appreciation for it when I visited Gurgaon in India a few years ago. When I first landed, I actually mistook the dense smog for clouds. I came pretty close to passing out once while waiting for a taxi on the street. I was basically in air-conditioned rooms the entire time I was there, save for a short trip to Delhi, which felt noticeably better. I've been equally surprised when visiting other cities with cleaner air than my own. It might be one of the things that pushes me to uproot my life here and try make a home someplace else.
- nomercy400 5y ago
  Ever felt that stingy feeling when you were outside on a bad air day (aqi 200+), like when having a hoarse or raspy voice, as if you just breathed a whiff of glass powder? That's how it can feel.
  - 5e92cb50239222b 5y ago
    It's a pretty common occurrence around here to lose your voice completely for a couple of days after spending an hour or two outside in winter smog. Still, almost nobody cares about air quality. I spent many years in this society and still don't understand such behavior.
    - mensetmanusman 5y ago
      Situations like these are where wearing outdoor N95 masks should be normalized for peoples health.
  - spaetzleesser 5y ago
    That happened to me when I visited Mumbai. After two days I couldn’t take it anymore and had to leave. It’s hard to believe people live under these conditions their whole lives.
- Proven 5y ago
  That's laughable. It was like that in the 70's and 80's and 90's and those "kids" are today adults who are not significantly worse off than people elsewhere in the world. The average person will probably outlive his peers in the West.
- mensetmanusman 5y ago
  People have statistically calculated the loss of years to be lived due to monthly exposure to such conditions. This, combined with the currency controls that China implements are, for example, an interesting manifestation of how the Chinese people literally sacrifice their lives and purchasing power to improve their economy, become globally competitive, and make their ‘leaders’ wealthy. The average person there does not know that they are doing this, but the leadership has this option in a totalitarian government that other states do not.
  - spaetzleesser 5y ago
    They are following the path of the West. We also sacrificed the health and lives of workers for a long time so capitalists could make more money. Any kind of consciousness and willingness to reduce pollution is a pretty new phenomenon. And we are still OK with people living in old buildings with lead paint and lead piping although we know how harmful that is.
  - LurkingPenguin 5y ago
    China's environmental track record stinks to high heaven (literally) and there's no doubt the country's leadership has been and is sacrificing public health for economic growth the same way the US did during industrialization. But the situation in Asia isn't as simple as China. I live in Taiwan. While there's no doubt that some (and at times perhaps a lot) of the air pollution in Taiwan blows over from China, there are plenty of domestic sources of air pollution. Taichung has the fourth largest coal-fired power plant in the world, and the area between Taichung and Kaohsiung is home to many factories and industrial sources of pollution. Scooter usage is very high as well. Taiwan is a democracy, getting closer to developed than developing, and a lot of younger people care about the environment. But without manufacturing and the pollution that comes with it, Taiwan doesn't have an economy. Malaysia has a lot of air pollution. Some is industrial, but a lot comes from fires in Indonesia. A similar situation exists in Thailand. The northern part of the country, including Chiang Mai, has horrible seasonal pollution from agricultural fires in Myanmar and Laos. And of course many parts of India are infamous for pollution. The bottom line is that Asia is the world's factory and home to many natural resources that have severe environmental consequences when exploited. Asian countries want to develop and the only realistic paths to economic growth are paved with pollution. Living here has made it clear to me that for all of the talk about reshoring manufacturing in the US, it isn't going to happen, not just for economic reasons, but because there's no way Americans will be willing to sacrifice the clean(er) air and water they have today. Pollution in Asia is a big problem but the West, because of its consumption that drives industrial activity in Asia, is reasonably as much a cause of the problem as the people in Asia are.
- spaetzleesser 5y ago
  I think sometime in the future people will look at the way we are accepting pollution these days in the same way we are looking back at how people openly worked with mercury in the past. It’s kind of of insane that we know about the harm done by pollution but shrug it off because doing something would be too expensive.
dahart 5y ago
It took me a few minutes to figure out how to read the Executive Summary (Table 0.1, page xvii). The AQG number is the main recommendation, and refers to the concentration in micrograms per cubic meter (ug/m^3). So the report says the world should aim for 5 ug/m^3 or less of PM 2.5 annually, and 15 ug/m^3 or less PM 10 annually. The interim targets are meant to be realistic goals to set along the way, so anywhere with worse than 75 ug/m^3 PM 2.5 on a daily basis might aim for that goal first. I had to check how the concentrations compare to various AQI (Air Quality Index) reports, like my iPhone weather app. 5 ug/m^3 of PM 2.5 is an AQI of 21. Currently an AQI of 0-50 is considered “good”, so maybe down the road the scale will be adjusted based on these new recommendations. https://www.airnow.gov/aqi/aqi-calculator-concentration/ https://www.airnow.gov/aqi/aqi-calculator-concentration/ Curious to see what the previous recommendations were, the 2005 report has the same first 3 interim targets for PM 2.5 and PM 10. The current report’s 4th interim target is set to the AQG (final recommendation) level from the previous report, and the new AQG level is now lower than the previous one. This is because there is now stronger statistical evidence of health damage occurring at levels above the new recommendation, the data has shown we needed a new lower threshold.
- strogonoff 5y ago
  > So the report says the world should aim for 5 ug/m^3 or less of PM 2.5 annually, and 15 ug/m^3 or less PM 10 annually. Looks like a decent guideline, but it’s important to keep in mind that there appears[0] to be no safe level of particulates. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particulates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particulates
  - infogulch 5y ago
    I wonder if there's a difference in harm caused between human-generated particulates vs particulates from, say, a forest. I assume at some point as air quality improves, natural pollen, bacteria, etc, would become a significant factor in simplified PM-based AQI, and my question is, is that still a problem?
    - MichaelZuo 5y ago
eisa01 5y ago
How does this compare to current EU guidelines? Air quality in Europe is already in a sorrid state
- beebeepka 5y ago
  Wait till people fire up the coal in their homes like they do every winter. I feel almost alone when I complain about this stuff. Coal + old clunkers = fantastic. There is no escape unless ones moves far away from all humans
  - legulere 5y ago
    Most countries in Europe have banned burning coal at home for decades. For heating burning wood is a major source of pollution. Other reasons are cars and the relatively high population density.
    - mnd999 5y ago
      Enforcement is pretty lax though, plenty of folks in the suburbs burning coal and logs on their ‘trendy’ open fires.
      - mensetmanusman 5y ago
        The particulate output of these pales in comparison to the coal plants though. Reminds me of when China clamped down on street vendors who used open fires while ignoring the steel plants down the road.
        7952 5y ago
        Tonnes of release doesnt tell the whole story though. Domestic burners are closer to the ground and other humans. Coal power stations have stacks to shoot the emissions higher in the atmosphere. In developed countries it just seems like a backward step when people can afford something better than fashion driven legacy technology.
Tepix 5y ago
When looking at air quality in Europe, the west coast of Ireland is the best place to live.
- leokennis 5y ago
  Is this because the wind is usually coming from the Atlantic ocean, so basically all the pollution there is blown towards continental Europe, and there is no polluter to the west of them (only sea)?
  - 14 5y ago
    That would make sense but I would also wager that the wind blowing over the water acts as a bit of a filter. As wind contacts the water, some of the pollutants would be absorbed by the ocean and taken out of the air cleaning it. Just a theory.
    - Dumblydorr 5y ago
      I don't think that's a major factor, the wind is mostly high above the water. Being far from polluting sources is the key for Ireland. Specifically, their western coast gets fresh air from thousands of miles of ocean, though admittedly there's a little bit of shipping and boating there. Compare to here on East Coast US, the wind comes from the continent, any fire out west/northwest leads to smog and haze here.
  - tyho69 5y ago
    In part, yes. Given it is a low emission region, areas of Ireland such as Mace Head typically don't have air quality issues from local sources. The predominant wind direction is blowing in area west->east across the atlantic, which means they're exposed to 'baseline' levels of ozone, which is both produced and destroyed over the ocean as well as in part transported from North America. With regards to particulate matter, the only real downside is that sea salt aerosol is in higher abundance there.
MrsPeaches 5y ago
Any recommendations for air qulity sensors? Quite like this idea, as (I assume) it also makes data available to others: https://airly.org https://airly.org
- snthd 5y ago
  Not a recommendation, but this is a thing - "ESP8266 Adds WiFi Logging To IKEA’s $12 Air Quality Sensor" https://hackaday.com/2021/07/24/esp8266-adds-wifi-logging-to-ikeas-air-quality-sensor/ https://hackaday.com/2021/07/24/esp8266-adds-wifi-logging-to...
- goblin89 5y ago
  Tried to buy a LaserEgg recently. It’s presumably less reliable than AirVisual, but also is a bit cheaper. Acts like a desktop accessory. Can’t comment on its performance, the customs of the country I’m in now have determined that air quality monitoring equipment cannot be imported for personal use. Also, took note of a recent article[0] by Jeff Geerling. It’s relying on AirGradient’s sensor. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28457135 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28457135
- 5e92cb50239222b 5y ago
  If you're willing to get your hands dirty, ESP32 + PMS5003. I wrote my own (crappy) firmware, most users prefer this ↓ https://github.com/esphome/esphome https://github.com/esphome/esphome
  - stavros 5y ago
    I can confirm, that way is really easy. Here's my config: https://www.pastery.net/yxbssn/ https://www.pastery.net/yxbssn/
- jschulenklopper 5y ago
  I have an Awair Element, https://uk.getawair.com/products/element https://uk.getawair.com/products/element, and it suits my needs just fine.
hendry 5y ago
Wonder how Singapore fares ...
- blago 5y ago
  Scroll down for historical data: https://aqicn.org/city/singapore/central/ https://aqicn.org/city/singapore/central/
nikkinana 5y ago
Who is china?
bob229 5y ago
the content asides it's amazing to me that anyone ever pays a single second's attention to such a discredited and morally bankrupt organisation as the UN
meteo-jeff 5y ago
Thanks for posting! This is a good reference to correctly implement and document APIs for Open-Meteo [0]. I soon want to integrate CAMS data from the Copernicus Project to offer Air Quality APIs for non-commercial use applications. [0] https://open-meteo.com/ https://open-meteo.com/
techsin101 5y ago
How does it compare to older guidelines
rhacker 5y ago
Most of my early life I lived in luxurious ~5 - 25 AQI. I live in pretty much the same area (California) and seems like during the summer we are going to suffer through varying levels between 80 and 500 AQI. It's a good time to get into the air cleaning industry (hepa, etc...)

166 points by malingo 5y ago

I never truly appreciated how valuable good air is until I moved to Asia and experienced weeks at a time living in air with AQIs over 100 and namely high PM2.5 levels. The physical effects of spending even an hour outside are immediately apparent and scary when I contemplate what this would probably do to my health if I rack up years of exposure. It's even scarier to think about children who are exposed to this air from birth and grow up inhaling it every time they walk to school, go outside to play, etc.

okal 5y ago
Same here. I live in Nairobi. The air quality here isn't all that good, but I acquired a newfound appreciation for it when I visited Gurgaon in India a few years ago. When I first landed, I actually mistook the dense smog for clouds. I came pretty close to passing out once while waiting for a taxi on the street. I was basically in air-conditioned rooms the entire time I was there, save for a short trip to Delhi, which felt noticeably better. I've been equally surprised when visiting other cities with cleaner air than my own. It might be one of the things that pushes me to uproot my life here and try make a home someplace else.
nomercy400 5y ago
Ever felt that stingy feeling when you were outside on a bad air day (aqi 200+), like when having a hoarse or raspy voice, as if you just breathed a whiff of glass powder? That's how it can feel.
- 5e92cb50239222b 5y ago
  It's a pretty common occurrence around here to lose your voice completely for a couple of days after spending an hour or two outside in winter smog. Still, almost nobody cares about air quality. I spent many years in this society and still don't understand such behavior.
  - mensetmanusman 5y ago
    Situations like these are where wearing outdoor N95 masks should be normalized for peoples health.
- spaetzleesser 5y ago
  That happened to me when I visited Mumbai. After two days I couldn’t take it anymore and had to leave. It’s hard to believe people live under these conditions their whole lives.
Proven 5y ago
That's laughable. It was like that in the 70's and 80's and 90's and those "kids" are today adults who are not significantly worse off than people elsewhere in the world. The average person will probably outlive his peers in the West.
mensetmanusman 5y ago
People have statistically calculated the loss of years to be lived due to monthly exposure to such conditions. This, combined with the currency controls that China implements are, for example, an interesting manifestation of how the Chinese people literally sacrifice their lives and purchasing power to improve their economy, become globally competitive, and make their ‘leaders’ wealthy. The average person there does not know that they are doing this, but the leadership has this option in a totalitarian government that other states do not.
- spaetzleesser 5y ago
  They are following the path of the West. We also sacrificed the health and lives of workers for a long time so capitalists could make more money. Any kind of consciousness and willingness to reduce pollution is a pretty new phenomenon. And we are still OK with people living in old buildings with lead paint and lead piping although we know how harmful that is.
- LurkingPenguin 5y ago
  China's environmental track record stinks to high heaven (literally) and there's no doubt the country's leadership has been and is sacrificing public health for economic growth the same way the US did during industrialization. But the situation in Asia isn't as simple as China. I live in Taiwan. While there's no doubt that some (and at times perhaps a lot) of the air pollution in Taiwan blows over from China, there are plenty of domestic sources of air pollution. Taichung has the fourth largest coal-fired power plant in the world, and the area between Taichung and Kaohsiung is home to many factories and industrial sources of pollution. Scooter usage is very high as well. Taiwan is a democracy, getting closer to developed than developing, and a lot of younger people care about the environment. But without manufacturing and the pollution that comes with it, Taiwan doesn't have an economy. Malaysia has a lot of air pollution. Some is industrial, but a lot comes from fires in Indonesia. A similar situation exists in Thailand. The northern part of the country, including Chiang Mai, has horrible seasonal pollution from agricultural fires in Myanmar and Laos. And of course many parts of India are infamous for pollution. The bottom line is that Asia is the world's factory and home to many natural resources that have severe environmental consequences when exploited. Asian countries want to develop and the only realistic paths to economic growth are paved with pollution. Living here has made it clear to me that for all of the talk about reshoring manufacturing in the US, it isn't going to happen, not just for economic reasons, but because there's no way Americans will be willing to sacrifice the clean(er) air and water they have today. Pollution in Asia is a big problem but the West, because of its consumption that drives industrial activity in Asia, is reasonably as much a cause of the problem as the people in Asia are.
spaetzleesser 5y ago
I think sometime in the future people will look at the way we are accepting pollution these days in the same way we are looking back at how people openly worked with mercury in the past. It’s kind of of insane that we know about the harm done by pollution but shrug it off because doing something would be too expensive.

dahart 5y ago

It took me a few minutes to figure out how to read the Executive Summary (Table 0.1, page xvii). The AQG number is the main recommendation, and refers to the concentration in micrograms per cubic meter (ug/m^3). So the report says the world should aim for 5 ug/m^3 or less of PM 2.5 annually, and 15 ug/m^3 or less PM 10 annually. The interim targets are meant to be realistic goals to set along the way, so anywhere with worse than 75 ug/m^3 PM 2.5 on a daily basis might aim for that goal first. I had to check how the concentrations compare to various AQI (Air Quality Index) reports, like my iPhone weather app. 5 ug/m^3 of PM 2.5 is an AQI of 21. Currently an AQI of 0-50 is considered “good”, so maybe down the road the scale will be adjusted based on these new recommendations. https://www.airnow.gov/aqi/aqi-calculator-concentration/ https://www.airnow.gov/aqi/aqi-calculator-concentration/ Curious to see what the previous recommendations were, the 2005 report has the same first 3 interim targets for PM 2.5 and PM 10. The current report’s 4th interim target is set to the AQG (final recommendation) level from the previous report, and the new AQG level is now lower than the previous one. This is because there is now stronger statistical evidence of health damage occurring at levels above the new recommendation, the data has shown we needed a new lower threshold.

strogonoff 5y ago
> So the report says the world should aim for 5 ug/m^3 or less of PM 2.5 annually, and 15 ug/m^3 or less PM 10 annually. Looks like a decent guideline, but it’s important to keep in mind that there appears[0] to be no safe level of particulates. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particulates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particulates
- infogulch 5y ago
  I wonder if there's a difference in harm caused between human-generated particulates vs particulates from, say, a forest. I assume at some point as air quality improves, natural pollen, bacteria, etc, would become a significant factor in simplified PM-based AQI, and my question is, is that still a problem?
  - MichaelZuo 5y ago

eisa01 5y ago

How does this compare to current EU guidelines? Air quality in Europe is already in a sorrid state

beebeepka 5y ago
Wait till people fire up the coal in their homes like they do every winter. I feel almost alone when I complain about this stuff. Coal + old clunkers = fantastic. There is no escape unless ones moves far away from all humans
- legulere 5y ago
  Most countries in Europe have banned burning coal at home for decades. For heating burning wood is a major source of pollution. Other reasons are cars and the relatively high population density.
  - mnd999 5y ago
    Enforcement is pretty lax though, plenty of folks in the suburbs burning coal and logs on their ‘trendy’ open fires.
    - mensetmanusman 5y ago
      The particulate output of these pales in comparison to the coal plants though. Reminds me of when China clamped down on street vendors who used open fires while ignoring the steel plants down the road.
      - 7952 5y ago
        Tonnes of release doesnt tell the whole story though. Domestic burners are closer to the ground and other humans. Coal power stations have stacks to shoot the emissions higher in the atmosphere. In developed countries it just seems like a backward step when people can afford something better than fashion driven legacy technology.

Tepix 5y ago

When looking at air quality in Europe, the west coast of Ireland is the best place to live.

leokennis 5y ago
Is this because the wind is usually coming from the Atlantic ocean, so basically all the pollution there is blown towards continental Europe, and there is no polluter to the west of them (only sea)?
- 14 5y ago
  That would make sense but I would also wager that the wind blowing over the water acts as a bit of a filter. As wind contacts the water, some of the pollutants would be absorbed by the ocean and taken out of the air cleaning it. Just a theory.
  - Dumblydorr 5y ago
    I don't think that's a major factor, the wind is mostly high above the water. Being far from polluting sources is the key for Ireland. Specifically, their western coast gets fresh air from thousands of miles of ocean, though admittedly there's a little bit of shipping and boating there. Compare to here on East Coast US, the wind comes from the continent, any fire out west/northwest leads to smog and haze here.
- tyho69 5y ago
  In part, yes. Given it is a low emission region, areas of Ireland such as Mace Head typically don't have air quality issues from local sources. The predominant wind direction is blowing in area west->east across the atlantic, which means they're exposed to 'baseline' levels of ozone, which is both produced and destroyed over the ocean as well as in part transported from North America. With regards to particulate matter, the only real downside is that sea salt aerosol is in higher abundance there.

MrsPeaches 5y ago

Any recommendations for air qulity sensors? Quite like this idea, as (I assume) it also makes data available to others: https://airly.org https://airly.org

snthd 5y ago
Not a recommendation, but this is a thing - "ESP8266 Adds WiFi Logging To IKEA’s $12 Air Quality Sensor" https://hackaday.com/2021/07/24/esp8266-adds-wifi-logging-to-ikeas-air-quality-sensor/ https://hackaday.com/2021/07/24/esp8266-adds-wifi-logging-to...
goblin89 5y ago
Tried to buy a LaserEgg recently. It’s presumably less reliable than AirVisual, but also is a bit cheaper. Acts like a desktop accessory. Can’t comment on its performance, the customs of the country I’m in now have determined that air quality monitoring equipment cannot be imported for personal use. Also, took note of a recent article[0] by Jeff Geerling. It’s relying on AirGradient’s sensor. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28457135 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28457135
5e92cb50239222b 5y ago
If you're willing to get your hands dirty, ESP32 + PMS5003. I wrote my own (crappy) firmware, most users prefer this ↓ https://github.com/esphome/esphome https://github.com/esphome/esphome
- stavros 5y ago
  I can confirm, that way is really easy. Here's my config: https://www.pastery.net/yxbssn/ https://www.pastery.net/yxbssn/
jschulenklopper 5y ago
I have an Awair Element, https://uk.getawair.com/products/element https://uk.getawair.com/products/element, and it suits my needs just fine.

hendry 5y ago

Wonder how Singapore fares ...

blago 5y ago
Scroll down for historical data: https://aqicn.org/city/singapore/central/ https://aqicn.org/city/singapore/central/

nikkinana 5y ago

Who is china?

bob229 5y ago

the content asides it's amazing to me that anyone ever pays a single second's attention to such a discredited and morally bankrupt organisation as the UN

meteo-jeff 5y ago

Thanks for posting! This is a good reference to correctly implement and document APIs for Open-Meteo [0]. I soon want to integrate CAMS data from the Copernicus Project to offer Air Quality APIs for non-commercial use applications. [0] https://open-meteo.com/ https://open-meteo.com/

techsin101 5y ago

How does it compare to older guidelines

rhacker 5y ago

Most of my early life I lived in luxurious ~5 - 25 AQI. I live in pretty much the same area (California) and seems like during the summer we are going to suffer through varying levels between 80 and 500 AQI. It's a good time to get into the air cleaning industry (hepa, etc...)