3.5 years
Average life expectancy lost to particle pollution in India
The AQLI 2025 report puts the global average loss at about 1.9 years.
Source: EPIC India: AQLI 2025 report summary · 2023 data · checked 13 November 202601 / 10
Clean Air India
Every breath should be safe.
Every child in every city can breathe safely, in every season.
AI-generated illustrationWhat good looks like
Every child can breathe safely in every season. Smog season is treated as an emergency, not a yearly surprise, and every city publishes honest air numbers.
- Air you can trust, with honest numbers for your own city
- Smog season treated as an emergency, not a yearly surprise
- Authorities that answer when citizens ask
Current problems
- Fine particle pollution (PM2.5) is above the WHO guideline in every part of India.
- Monitoring is uneven: some towns have a monitoring station nearby and many do not.
Evidence and data
41 µg/m³
India's average PM2.5 in 2023
The WHO guideline is 5 µg/m³ a year; India's national standard is 40.
Source: EPIC India: AQLI 2025 report summary · 2023 data · checked 13 November 2026Figures from public reports; we are checking them against the latest releases.
Why this matters
Breathing polluted air every day for years adds up, even when no single day feels like an emergency. Clean air protects children, older people and everyone who works outdoors.
Possible solutions
- 1
Know your air
Publish honest, local air numbers and make them easy to find. You can start with the tools on this page.
- 2
Enforce the standards
Name the main sources in each city (traffic, industry, dust, burning) and act on them with deadlines.
- 3
Make it cheaper to clean than to pollute
Rules that reward cutting pollution can work. Surat's pilot is one example.
Positive Indian examples
Surat's particulate emissions market
In 2019 the Gujarat Pollution Control Board and the University of Chicago's Energy Policy Institute started a pilot market where factories in Surat trade permits to emit particulate matter. A study published in 2025 found that participating plants cut particulate emissions by roughly 20 to 30 per cent.
Source: EPIC: world's first emissions trading scheme for particulate matter · checked 13 November 2026Related articles and topics
Air tools
Live air quality for any place in India, and ways to play with the numbers.
LIVE AIR
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Find the AQI of any place
Type any city, town or village in India. We use the nearest monitoring station.
Play with the air
Your smoke meter
Just by breathing, your city's air adds up to this many cigarettes.
13.1cigarettes a day
393in a month
4782in a year
Berkeley Earth rule: 22 µg/m³ of PM2.5 over 24 hours is about 1 cigarette a day. An estimate, not a medical diagnosis.
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Guess the sky
Here is the sky over a real Indian city today. Which city is it?
Take part
Share an idea
What would make your city, or India, better? Tell us in a few words. We read every one.