Lahore air hazardous as AQI passes 530, Gujranwala worse

Lahore's air was in the hazardous range on Monday morning, with IQAir recording an Air Quality Index of 535 at 8am and PM2.5 at 343 micrograms per cubic metre. PM2.5 particles are small enough to reach deep into the lungs and enter the bloodstream. ProPakistani reported that readings had already crossed into the hazardous band in the early hours.

Gujranwala recorded dirtier air than Lahore. The city stood at 606 on IQAir's live ranking in the morning and climbed to 675 in later hourly updates, while Lahore's reading rose to 535 in the same updates.

Five of the six most polluted cities on IQAir's Pakistan ranking were in Punjab: Gujranwala at 606, Lahore at 509, Faisalabad and Multan at 310 each, and Sialkot at 260, with Peshawar sixth at 216. The figures shifted through the morning as monitors updated.

The two outlets differed on Lahore's position globally. The Current reported that Lahore again topped the list of the world's most polluted cities, while ProPakistani's account of the same ranking placed Gujranwala first and Lahore second.

The spike follows a sharp rise in farm fires across the province. Monitoring website HamariHawa, analysing NASA satellite data, counted 13,241 fire spots in Pakistani Punjab between October 1 and 29, 4.2 times the 3,158 detected in Indian Punjab over the same period. About 92 percent were on farmland and were likely crop-residue burning. Of the month's total, 6,655 spots came in the last seven days, with 1,327 on October 29, the highest single day. Okara recorded the most at 2,144, followed by Gujranwala at 1,011 and Nankana Sahib at 1,003.

A Pakistan Air Quality Initiative analysis has questioned how much of October's improvement came from policy rather than weather. Senior Minister Marriyum Aurangzeb said the province had recorded its cleanest October in five years, with Lahore's average AQI at 180.5 against 204.6 last year. PAQI found average PM2.5 across 26 monitoring sites fell 27 percent year on year, but estimated the improvement at about 4 percent once weather was accounted for, attributing much of the decline to a deeper nighttime atmospheric mixing layer that gave pollutants more room to disperse.