Air Quality Life Index (AQLI) 2025

The Air Quality Life Index (AQLI)

The Air Quality Life Index (AQLI) was created by Professor Michael Greenstone along with the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC).

It converts air quality measurements into their effects on life span, providing highly localized information to assist users in understanding how much longer individuals might live if pollution levels adhered to different criteria.

It backs EPIC’s Clean Air Program, designed to guide policy and public initiatives through reliable pollution data.

Essential Discoveries from the latest report

South Asia, which encompasses Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Pakistan, continues to be the most polluted area.

Bangladesh ranks as the worst in the world, with air pollution 12 times above WHO standards.

China has reduced its pollution by 40.8% since 2014, although it remains above WHO limits, thanks to stringent policies like traffic controls, cleaner heating methods, and decreased coal consumption.

In 2023, North America experienced significant pollution increases because of wildfires, while Bolivia emerged as the most polluted nation in Latin America.

In African nations such as Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, pollution currently represents a more significant threat to life expectancy than HIV/AIDS or malaria.

Situation in India

Air pollution presents the gravest health risk in India, diminishing average life expectancy by 3.5 years — almost double the effect of malnutrition and more than five times that of unsafe water and sanitation.

Every one of the 1.4 billion Indians resides in regions that surpass the WHO's safe PM2.5 threshold (5 µg/m³).

The area most affected is Northern India, particularly Delhi-NCR, where people may forfeit as much as 8.2 years of life.

Other regions such as Bihar (5.6 years), Haryana (5.3 years), and Uttar Pradesh (5 years) also exhibit significant declines.

46% of Indians reside in regions that surpass India's own less stringent PM2.5 limit of 40 µg/m³.

Ideas

The AQLI 2025 makes it clear that we need strong, evidence-based policies to fight air pollution right away.

It stresses that cleaning the air is important not only for the environment but also for living longer.

The report calls for more clean energy, stricter rules on emissions, and money to be spent on green infrastructure. It also calls for more public awareness and government action to deal with this growing health crisis.