Air pollution: Dhaka logs month’s worst air, health precautions urged
Dhaka ranked fourth among 127 cities worldwide in terms of air pollution on Tuesday morning.
At around 8:30 am, the average Air Quality Index (AQI) for Dhaka, as reported by IQAir, stood at 193, which is classified as unhealthy.
Dhaka’s air quality has not been this poor at any other time this month. An AQI score of 201 or above is considered very unhealthy.
In some parts of the city today, Tuesday, the air quality has reached that level. In total, eight areas have been identified as having highly polluted air.
The data was presented by IQAir, a Switzerland-based organisation that regularly monitors global air quality levels.
The live air quality index (AQI) provides real-time information about how clean or polluted the air is in a specific city, helping to raise public awareness and issue health advisories.
At present, Lahore, Pakistan, tops the global pollution list with a score of 421.
High pollution recorded in 8 areas of Dhaka
The air quality in eight areas of the city is particularly poor. Among them, Becharam Deuri in Old Dhaka recorded the highest AQI at 255, categorised as very unhealthy.
The remaining seven areas are - Bay’s Edgewater (193), Kalyanpur (193), South Pallabi (193), Goran (191), Eastern Housing (183), Grace International School (171), Shanta Forum (168).
Advice for the public people
In response to the current air quality situation in Dhaka and other cities, IQAir has issued several public health recommendations. Always wear a mask when going outdoors, keep windows closed to prevent polluted air from entering, avoid outdoor exercise as much as possible. In areas where the air quality is unhealthy, wearing a mask outside is mandatory.
Impact of air pollution
Air pollution has become the greatest external threat to life expectancy in Bangladesh. It is estimated that the average lifespan of Bangladeshis is being reduced by five and a half years due to air pollution.
This information was revealed in the 2025 annual update of the Air Quality Life Index (AQLI), prepared by the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC). According to the report, Bangladesh remains the most polluted country in the world.
Globally, approximately 135 million (13.5 crore) premature deaths occurred between 1980 and 2020 due to air pollution, according to research by Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore.
In March last year, the World Bank published a report titled “The Bangladesh Country Environment Analysis (CEA)”, which stated that over 272,000 premature deaths in Bangladesh in 2019 were linked to four types of environmental pollution, with 55 per cent attributed to air pollution alone.
Additionally, pollution-related damages that year amounted to 17.6 per cent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).