Ambient air pollution A global assessment of exposure and burden of disease

2.1.2. Results
Data availability
The 2016 version of the WHO ambient (outdoor) air quality database consists mainly of urban air quality
data - annual means for PM 10
and / or PM 2.5
- covering about 3 000 human settlements in 103 countries,
for the years 2008-2015 (9). The regional distribution and the number of settlements, and corresponding
accessible data are described in Table 2 and Figure 1, respectively.
Table 2 : Total number of towns and cities in AAP database, 2016 version, by region
Region
Number
of towns / cities
Number of countries
with data
Total number of
countries in region
Africa (Sub-Saharan) (LMIC) 39 10 47
Americas (LMIC) 102 13 24
Americas (HIC) 524 6 11
Eastern Mediterranean (LMIC) 53 8 15
Eastern Mediterranean (HIC) 31 6 6
Europe (LMIC) 165 9 19
Europe (HIC) 1 549 33 34
South-East Asia (LMIC) 175 9 11
Western Pacific (LMIC) 225 4 21
Western Pacific (HIC) 109 5 6
Global 2 972 103 194
AAP : Ambient air pollution database ; LMIC : Low-and middle-income countries ; HIC : high-income countries.
Figure 1 : Number of towns and cities with accessible PM 10
and PM 2.5
data in 2016 per urban population.
Nr of towns and cities per 1 million urban inhabitants
3.0
PM 10
PM 2.5
2.5
2.0
1.5
1.0
0.5
0.0
Afr
Amr
(HIC)
Amr
(LMIC)
Emr
(HIC)
Emr
(LMIC)
Eur
(HIC)
Eur
(LMIC)
Sear
Wpr
(HIC)
Wpr
(LMIC)
PM 10
/ 2.5
: Fine particulate matter of 10 / 2.5 microns or less ; Afr : Africa ; Amr : Americas ; Emr : Eastern Mediterranean ; Eur : Europe ;
Sear : South-East Asia ; Wpr: Western Pacific; LMIC : low- and middle-income countries ; HIC : high-income countries.
25