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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.

May 2026: India's air remains in crisis. 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, signalling year-round enforcement. 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
--
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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Walkthrough NEW

64-slide guided tour (MMSF Fellows deck)

Checking for anomalies...

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, Krishna 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
Krishna et al. 2024, Lancet Planetary Health. India’s first causal dose-response from a domestic 7-district cohort.
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