Lahore Chokes at 419 AQI as World's Most Polluted City While $10m Clean-Air Fund Is Announced

Lahore Chokes at 419 AQI as World's Most Polluted City While $10m Clean-Air Fund Is Announced

Lahore's air quality index climbed to 419 on Thursday morning, the worst reading of any major city in the world, as the Punjab capital's smog crisis deepened. The figure, recorded by Swiss monitoring firm IQAir between 10 a.m. and 11 a.m., put Lahore far ahead of Cairo at 274 and New Delhi at 220. The Punjab government's own dashboard showed Lahore at 324, with neighbouring Kasur even worse at 348. Any reading above 300 falls in the "hazardous" band. The spike followed a punishing run: on Wednesday the citywide index stood at 358, with Allama Iqbal Town recording 605, and schools halted outdoor activities earlier in the week.

Air quality experts are blaming missed chances to wash the smog out of the sky. They told local media that if the government had arranged sufficiently heavy rainfall across the city on overcast days in October, the smog could have been cleared at least once. Punjab has done it before: in November 2024 the province carried out its first cloud seeding operation, producing rain in Jhelum, Gujar Khan, Chakwal and Talagang. A westerly system did bring rain to northern Pakistan last weekend and briefly eased Lahore's smog, but no seeding was announced, and experts say officials instead point to a pollution-clearing technology they cannot name.

Against that backdrop, the federal government has announced a $10 million fund for clean-air startups, unveiled on October 28 by Climate Change Minister Musadik Malik at the Pakistan National Clean Air Conference in Islamabad, with board approval expected on October 29. The minister estimated that poor air quality costs Pakistan 6.5 percent of GDP through illness and hospitalisation, hitting poor communities, schoolchildren and outdoor workers hardest. Doctors say residents should avoid unnecessary outdoor activity, wear an N95 mask when they must go out, and keep doors and windows shut.

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