What are you breathing, right now?

September 2026: The monsoon withdraws from northwest India around the middle of this month, and with it goes the stretch when much of the country breathes its cleanest air of the year. October opens the season everyone argues about: paddy stubble burning across Punjab and Haryana, Diwali, and the winter inversion that holds the Indo-Gangetic plain's emissions down at ground level. The most recent IQAir World Air Quality Report (the 2025 edition, published March 2026 covering 2025 data) ranks Loni, India as the most polluted city on Earth (112.5 µg/m³, or 22× the WHO guideline); India's average PM2.5 of 48.9 µg/m³ is nearly 10× the WHO limit, and only 14% of global cities meet safe air standards. The Lancet Countdown 2025 (published October 2025) attributes 1.72 million Indian deaths per year to ambient PM2.5, among the world’s largest national tolls. NCAP's 31 March 2026 deadline has elapsed: only 23 of the 100 cities with sufficient PM10 data met the 40% reduction target (CREA, Tracing the Hazy Air 2026). 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. New: Your Airshed or Your Town now carries 43 years of PM2.5 for 783 districts, 1980 to 2022, a record of what the air was doing decades before anyone was measuring it; and Hawa Ka Hisab joins the Janhit Partners.