According to a report released by Greenpeace today, Beijing now ranks 122 in the list of the world's most polluted cities. The report was compiled using data from the IQAir AirVisual's 2018 World Air Quality Report and their interactive World’s Most Polluted Cities ranking.

This news may come as a big surprise to some, as 'Beijing' is often used as shorthand for 'pollution.' The fact that China's capital does not even rank in the top 100 proves just how much has changed since the worst period in the late '90s.

While Beijing may be low on this list, it is rather high on the list of most polluted capitals, coming in at number 8, behind Delhi, Ulaanbaatar, Kabul, and Kuwait, among others.

While pollution peaked in China in the '90s, a combination of aggressive government regulations, including the relocation of pollutant-emitting factories away from the Beijing region, over the last few decades have led to a marked decrease in pollution in the city. The trend, however, does not reflect dropping pollution rates across all of China.

Given the city's concentration of government organs and members, and the business elite, as well as a large international population, critics point out that polluting factories have simply been moved further away from the capital into rural regions which enjoy much less international scrutiny and press. That latter point appears to be backed up by this graphic, showing the most and least polluted regional cities in East Asia.

Although China once dominated 'most polluted' lists, other countries in Asia now occupy higher positions. The surprising change of rankings can also be attributed to other factors, such as accurate data from previously unmonitored locales like Pakistan now coming into the field. Meanwhile, other global powers – notably India – have increased their industrial production and energy demands, seeing their rates of pollution rising in parallel.

Other key findings from the report include:

Out of the 20 most polluted cities in the world, 18 are in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. This includes previously unseen data from Pakistan’s first public monitoring network of sensors.

Jakarta, Indonesia, and Hanoi, Vietnam, are Southeast Asia’s two most polluted cities. With Beijing’s air quality getting better, Jakarta risks overtaking China’s famously polluted capital soon.

Average concentrations of PM2.5 in China's cities fell by 12 percent from 2017 to 2018.

The World Health Organization estimates that 9 out of 10 people worldwide are regularly breathing unsafe polluted air, yet huge parts of the world still lack access to real-time data, and are unaware of the risks.

Read the full report here.

According to the report, air pollution will cause an estimated seven million premature deaths globally in the next year and cost the world’s economy nearly USD 225 billion. So while the situation is improving in Beijing, the broader fight against deadly air pollution is far from over.

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Images: IQAir