New report ranks Puerto Rico eighth for clean air quality worldwide

The other countries that appear on the list are Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Australia, New Zealand, Bermuda, Grenada, Iceland, Mauritius, and French Polynesia, which has the cleanest air in the world.

Between economic woes, healthcare shortcomings, natural disasters, and crime, Puerto Rico has its fair share of bad news.

But we have some good news from the island: Puerto Rico is one of the top ten countries with the cleanest air in the world.

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According to the 2023 World Air Quality Report of 134 countries, only 10 had air quality that met the World Health Organization’s (WHO) standard for clean air.

Puerto Rico landed in the eighth place in the report, published recently by IQAir, a Swiss firm that monitors real-time air quality worldwide.

In its annual assessment of each country’s air quality, IQAir uses as its primary indicator the average concentration of PM2.5, which are fine particles in the air that can cause short-term health effects. WHO guidelines recommend exposure to no more than an annual mean PM2.5 concentration of 5 micrograms per cubic meter.

The other countries that appear on the list are Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Australia, New Zealand, Bermuda, Grenada, Iceland, Mauritius, and French Polynesia, which has the cleanest air in the world.

According to the report, all but one of the 100 cities with the most polluted air in the world are in Asia.

Oceania, comprising Australia, New Zealand, and French Polynesia, has the cleanest air.

In the US, air pollution climbed from a nationwide average of 8.9 µg/m3 in 2022 to 9.1 last year.

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Columbus, Ohio, was ranked as the most polluted major US city for the second year in a row. While Las Vegas, Nevada, was the least polluted major US city.

This was the first time Canada surpassed the US in terms of air pollution, largely due to the massive wildfires that burned from May to October last year.