Lahore retains ‘title’ of most polluted city

LAHORE: Provincial metropolis continued to stay on top of the world’s most polluted cities here on Monday. Data collected from IQAir revealed that the Air Quality Index (AQI) of Lahore on Monday was 312 while Delhi, India stood second with an AQI of 262 and Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan was third with an AQI of 187. The rest of the top ten polluted cities included Dhaka, Bangladesh (181 AQI), Karachi, Pakistan (180 AQI), Hanoi, Vietnam (178 AQI), Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia (174 AQI), Kolkata, India (170 AQI), Tashkent, Uzbekistan (162 AQI) and Chengdu, China (160 AQI). On the other hand, Met officials said that continental air was prevailing over most parts of the country. They predicted that cold and dry weather was expected in most parts of the country while very cold in northern areas and north Balochistan. Met officials further predicted dense foggy conditions were likely to prevail over plain areas of Punjab, KP and Sindh during night and morning hours while frost was likely to occur at isolated places in Potohar region during morning hours. Monday’s lowest temperature was recorded at Leh where mercury dropped down to -10°C while in Lahore it was 6°C and maximum was 21°C.