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India's air is killing 1.72 million people every year

JanVayu is India's independent, citizen-led air quality platform. We track live pollution data, measure health impacts, follow the money, and hold governments accountable. Because clean air is not a privilege, it is a right.

July 2026: The monsoon brings a brief respite, but India's air remains in crisis year-round. The most recent IQAir World Air Quality Report (the 2025 edition, published March 2025 covering 2024 data) ranks Loni, India as the most polluted city on Earth (112.5 µg/m³ — 22× the WHO guideline); India's average PM2.5 of 48.9 µg/m³ is nearly 10× the WHO limit; only 14% of global cities meet safe air standards. The Lancet Countdown 2025 (launched May 2026) attributes 1.72 million Indian deaths per year to ambient PM2.5 — ~70% of the global burden. NCAP's 31 March 2026 deadline has elapsed: only 23 of 100 cities with sufficient data hit the target (CREA Jan 2026); CSE's April 2026 five-year review counts 37 of 131. CAQM invoked Stage-I GRAP off-season for the first time on 19 May 2026, then revoked it on 29 May 2026 as the monsoon set in — the calm months mask a year-round crisis. New: a seven-game Learning Games panel is now live — including the new Vayu Junction word-grouping puzzle — and a 64-slide guided walkthrough of the whole platform built for the MMSF Fellows cohort.
Delhi Live PM2.5
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µg/m³
--x WHO guideline
AQI: --
2.0M
Deaths/Year (India)
State of Global Air 2025
$260B
Annual Cost (India)
9.5% GDP (Lancet)
96
Delhi Annual PM2.5
19x WHO (2025 avg)
--
Worst City PM2.5
Right now
Connecting to live data...
What you're breathing right now Delhi
--
cigarettes/day equivalent
Berkeley Earth: 1 cig ≈ 22 µg/m³·day of PM2.5. Today's air ≈ today's smokes.
Disease risk now
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What to do today --
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Delhi-NCR GRAP Status
Stage I
201-300
Stage II
301-400
Stage III
401-450
Stage IV
450+
Worst Cities Now
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Best Cities Now
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Metro Cities AQI (Live)
North vs South India
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Did You Know

Six sourced India-specific facts · figures are the most recent published values from each source (Lancet Countdown 2025, IQAir 2025, AQLI 2025, CSE 2026, Jaganathan et al. 2024)
1.72M
Indian PM2.5 deaths a year
Lancet Countdown 2025. Up from 1.5M last cycle — ~70% of the global PM2.5 mortality burden is India.
112.5 µg/m³
Loni, India — the world’s most polluted city
IQAir World Air Quality Report 2025 (covering 2024 data; the most recent annual). Loni in Ghaziabad district, UP, dethroned Byrnihat. The annual average is 22× the WHO guideline.
3.5 yrs
Life expectancy lost on average
AQLI 2025 (UChicago EPIC). Indo-Gangetic Plain residents lose 7-8 years — the highest in any region globally.
64%
of NCAP funds spent on dust suppression
CSE 2026 NCAP review. Mostly mechanical sweeping & water-spraying — not the combustion sources that drive most PM2.5.
India’s NAAQS vs WHO guideline
India NAAQS = 40 µg/m³ annual PM2.5; WHO 2021 guideline = 5. Indian standard last revised in 2009.
8.6%
Mortality rise per +10 µg/m³ PM2.5
Jaganathan et al. 2024, Lancet Planetary Health. India’s first nationwide causal estimate — a difference-in-differences design across 655 districts.
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