America’s Most Polluted City

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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America’s Most Polluted City

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The gold standard of air pollution research is the IQAir survey. It looks at air pollution levels in every country and large cities worldwide. It looks at PM2.5 data. PM2.5 are particles or droplets that measure two and one-half microns or less in width. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency uses them as a standard for air pollution. (These are the most congested cities in the world.)
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The IQAir study examines PM2.5 information across 131 countries and 7,323 cities. The data are pulled from over 30,000 air quality monitors. Poor air quality causes over 6 million deaths per year. It causes 93 billion days of people who “live with illness.”
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Air quality is ranked on a scale of zero to 100. The closer a rating is to 100, the worse the air quality. Among countries, Chad has the worst score at 89.7. Iraq follows it at 80.1, and Pakistan at 70.9. The United States ranks 99th with a rating of 8.9, the same as the United Kingdom.
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The countries with the cleanest air are Guam at 1.3, followed by French Polynesia at 2.5, the U.S. Virgin Islands at 2.9 and Bermuda at 3.0.

The regional capital city with the worst air is N’Djamena, Chad’s largest city, at 89.7. New Delhi follows it at 89.1 and Bagdad at 86.7.
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The most polluted city in the United States is Columbus, Ohio, at 13.1. Atlanta follows it at 12.1.

These are the 10 most polluted cities in the United States based on air quality:

  • Columbus, Ohio (13.1)
  • Atlanta, Ga. (12.1)
  • Chicago, Ill. (11.8)
  • Indianapolis, Ind. (11.3)
  • Dallas, Texas (10.9)
  • Baltimore, Md. (10.7)
  • Los Angeles, Calif. (10.5)
  • Sacramento, Calif. (10.4)
  • Houston, Texas (10.1)
  • Detroit, Mich. (10.0)
Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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