There are cities where you instantly become aware of the air quality when you open the hotel door to a busy street and smell toxic gases floating all over the place. An unfortunate choice of destination, but it doesn’t have to be that way. More and more cities have programs that restrict vehicles that pollute the air from city centers, and promote public transport, bicycles, and other clean transport methods. Of course, there are many other factors that have an impact on air quality, and it takes years to transform city air cleaner.
Autotrader conducted a study that examined where are the cleanest and dirtiest cities in the world when measured by air quality. The least polluted air was found in cities in Australia, New Zealand and Oceania. The darkest continent from air quality point of view is Asia where Shanghai (China), Kolkata (India), and New Delhi (India) were ranked with the lowest air quality.
Let’s focus on Europe where we often have big differences between cultures and economies within small regions that are located next to one another. The win for the cleanest city air in Europe goes to Bilbao, on the north coast of Spain in the Basque region. Here is the ranking for the top 10 cities with cleanest air in Europe:
- Bilbao, Spain 1.1 (air quality index from 1 to 5, smaller number means better air quality)
- Amsterdam, Netherlands 1.25
- Edinburgh, Scotland 1.25
- Manchester, England 1.25
- Bergen, Norway 1.3
- Oslo, Norway 1.3
- London, England 1.35
- Gothenburg, Sweden 1.38
- Glasgow, Scotland 1.38
- Cologne, Germany 1.4
Autotrader sourced the data for the study from OpenWeather. The pollutants tracked for this study were: Sulphur dioxide (SO2), Nitrogen dioxide (NO2), particulates (PM2.5 and PM10), Ozone (O3), and Carbon monoxide (CO) (μg/m3).
Many of the European cities in the top 10 are seaside settlements that get fresh air from the Atlantic Ocean, but Cologne (Köln) is far from the sea. In addition, it is in the middle of one of the busiest, most industrialized region of Germany. Quite an achievement for Cologne to make it to the top 10.
The study included 393 cities across the world.
The most polluted cities in Europe are in Italy. Venice has the worst air quality, followed by Turin (Torino) and Rome.
