This makes very little sense. Air pollution is too local to be meaningful at a country level. Is air quality in London the same as it would be in Cornwall a few hours drive away?
Air quality has increased greatly over time in developed countries so labelling present situation a "catastrophe" seems rather too late. London has been continuously improving in terms of just particulates for over a century, and hugely so:
You saved me writing a comment (almost). The map show huge countries such as Canada, Russia, China, and most countries in South America as not having the highest air quality rating even though the air pollution is specific to certain relatively small regions that experience such pollution, while vast regions of those countries are basically undeveloped wilderness with very pure air. This map is so misleading that it is unhelpful.
From a health perspective you have to measure average air quality experienced by a person under typical circumstances. No point measuring air no one breaths.
Does it even make sense to look at this on a country level perspective? Countries have different sizes and it heavily depends where you are and also where the air monitor stations are placed.
As an example if Finland had one air quality station in Helsinki and the 10 in the “remote wilderness” for scientific purposes, then the data likely would be skewed.
Usually when considering safe air you'd take into account population density. The goal is to find a number that represents how many inhabitants are affected by pollution after all.
E.g. you weigh air measurement stations by the surrounding population density.
Not so much. Australian coal-fired generators are gradually being phased out and replaced by gas-fired generators, or by renewable sources in some jurisdictions.
Australia is still a large coal producer, most of which is exported to China and India. And Australian export coal is high quality thermal coal meaning that it produces more heat and less CO2 than the brown coal those countries would otherwise use. Yet activists and Labor Part/Green Party politicians are constantly trying to close down the coal-mining industry even though there is no possibility of either India or China reducing their coal usage in the foreseeable future.
Australia also produces a lot of natural gas, mostly for export. Consumers in the Eastern states are experiencing massive power price inflation because their state governments chose not to replace old coal-fired generators with gas-fired power generation in their states, banned development of new gas fields: i.e. an all-renewable sources policy, and they must pay international market prices for their gas. Western Australia produces large amounts of gas and a proportion is production reserved for the state of Western Australia. As a result Western Australia has relatively low power prices and a secure supply of gas.
That's good to know. I heard Australia had the worst CO2 emissions per capita of the world in 2009, so even if PFAS air pollution isn't about CO2, there are correllations so it's wierd to see it both in the best and worst (of course extremely low population density can hide high air pollution per capita).
Indian subcontinent is most polluted with Bangladesh, Pakistan and India taking up top 3 positions. It seems triple whammy of population, geography and resources is hard to beat.
> It seems triple whammy of population, geography and resources is hard to beat.
Doing nothing about it is what's hard to beat.
Even simple things like river pollution, which is directly tied to securing access to safe drinking water and could easily be mitigated by investing in very basic public sanitation services, is not even addressed by their governments.
To say that all the three have terrible public sanitation is not entirely inaccurate. However, atleast in india, our government has been trying very hard to improve access to toilets in rural india.
Just wait till fire season starts in North America, then you will realize that even if you are in a first world country you can breathe third world air, material wealth can't save you from nature.
Don't even have to wait until fire season starts, there are several wildfires going on in the US right now. Texas seems to have the worst of it at the moment.
How is this measured exactly? Does every part of the country have to meet the standard, or is it an average? Most of the countries seem to be small island nations or very sparsely populated, but I'd be surprised if the large Australian cities have air cleaner than that of any of the many tiny island nations that didn't make this very short list.
Maybe other cities. Perth is not. I breathe much better when I get 75kms out of the city and become a normal human being again.
The smell of sulfur in 91 Petrol is very noticeable. Bushfires blow smoke across the whole metro area. One in three Australians are allergic to grass pollens.
Combined with the recent architectural changes (installing the world famous blender Default Cube everywhere) and increasing cliquey isolation, it has become quite difficult to enjoy the city life.
It's often a battle not to leave.
Though I'm not supposed to say the truth so much, it bothers people.
Air quality has increased greatly over time in developed countries so labelling present situation a "catastrophe" seems rather too late. London has been continuously improving in terms of just particulates for over a century, and hugely so:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/air-pollution-london-vs-d...
The UK on other measures:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/air-pollutant-emissions
and that still does not take into account lots of other improvements, including things that have been banned altogether (leaded petrol).