Central Asia’s worsening air

Central Asia’s air got markedly worse in 2025, with Tajikistan and Uzbekistan landing among the world’s most polluted countries. (iqair.com) IQAir’s 2025 report, released in April 2026, says Tajikistan ranked third globally and Uzbekistan tenth for annual fine-particle pollution, known as PM2.5, a soot-sized pollutant that can lodge deep in the lungs. The report covers 9,446 cities across 143 countries, regions, and territories using data from more than 40,000 monitoring stations and sensors. (iqair.com) The World Health Organization’s annual guideline for PM2.5 is 5 micrograms per cubic meter. Uzbekistan’s World Health Organization health scorecard lists a national annual mean of 41 micrograms per cubic meter, or about eight times that guideline. (cdn.who.int) The problem is not limited to a few winter smog days. The World Bank said in June 2025 that PM2.5 levels in major Central Asian cities often run 6 to 12 times above World Health Organization guidelines, with urban and rural air both affected by heating, transport, industry, and cross-border dust storms. (worldbank.org) The World Bank estimated that ambient PM2.5 pollution was linked to more than 65,000 premature deaths in Central Asia in 2021. It put the annual health cost at $15 billion to $21 billion, equal to 3% to 5% of the region’s 2022 gross domestic product. (worldbank.org) In Tashkent, the World Bank said the annual average PM2.5 level is more than six times the World Health Organization guideline. Its October 2024 assessment said heating accounted for 28% of human-caused PM2.5 in the city, transport 16%, and industry 13%, while windblown dust made up 36% of total PM2.5 pollution. (worldbank.org) That split helps explain why the air problem has proved hard to fix. The World Bank said soil and desert dust accounts for 20% to 50% of total PM2.5 exposure in many Central Asian cities, but 50% to 80% still comes from human sources that governments can target through cleaner heating, transport, and industrial controls. (worldbank.org) Uzbekistan has started to tighten some rules. The World Bank said the Uzbek Health Ministry adopted a new PM2.5 standard for residential air quality on May 21, 2024, aligned with World Health Organization recommendations, and called it an initial interim target rather than a final solution. (worldbank.org) Children face a heavier burden from the same air. UNICEF’s 2024 climate analysis for Uzbekistan lists air pollution alongside sand and dust storms, extreme heat, and water stress as environmental hazards shaping children’s health and daily life. (unicef.org) The latest rankings sharpen a point regional agencies were already making in 2024 and 2025: in Central Asia, dirty air is not a short, local episode but a year-round mix of smoke, exhaust, industrial emissions, and dust that reaches across borders. (iqair.com)