Index of air quality in the world's major cities: July 8

(AFP PHOTO / NASA EARTH OBSERVATORY)

Daily air quality index of some of the world's major cities on July 8, using data from AirNow, CITEAIR, and the American Embassy in Beijing.

City		Average 07/07/2011	Average 08/07/2011
London
Madrid			NA
Paris
Brussels
Berlin
Prague
Zurich
Beijing			NA
Beijing US embassy stats
Shanghai			NA
Hong Kong
Brunei
Seoul			NA
New York
San Francisco
Mexico City
Montreal
Toronto
New Delhi
Sydney

The Air Quality Index (AQI) or Air Pollution Index (API) measures the parts of pollutant in a specified volume of air. The lower the AQI the fewer particles of pollution are in the air. For a more detailed explanation see http://www.airnow.gov/index.cfm?action=aqibasics.aqi.

All results are color-coded following the American AQI standard shown below. For all countries outside of Europe, the US and Canada, that region's definition of AQI terms has been accepted.

Legend

Air Quality
Good
Moderate
Unhealthy for sensitive groups
Unhealthy
Very Unhealthy
Hazardous

Data: Data relating to Europe, the US and Canada is taken from CITEAIR - Common Information to European Air ( http://www.airnow.gov / http://www.airqualitynow.eu); data concerning China is taken from both official Chinese government sources and the US Embassy's automated air index Twitter account. For all countries the data displayed falls within either that country's definition of the level of air quality or the international AQI index. Data for all European, US and Canadian cities refers to background, not roadside, levels of air quality.

All data was collected at 6:00am GMT on July 8.
http://www.airqualitynow.eu
http://www.airnow.gov