Data Mechanics

Air pollution

How much fine-particle pollution people breathe, and how many live above the WHO guideline.

Fine particles smaller than 2.5 microns (PM2.5) reach deep into the lungs and cause severe harm. The first measure is the average yearly concentration people are exposed to, weighted by where they live, in cities and the countryside; IHME's Global Burden of Disease study estimates it. The second is the share of people living where it is above 10 micrograms per cubic metre, the guideline value of the World Health Organization (WHO) that these estimates use. The World Bank republishes both.

World map · PM2.5 exposure

Source: World Bank, World Development Indicators (updated 2026-10-08) · fetched 26 Oct 2026

Over time · PM2.5 exposure

Source: World Bank, World Development Indicators (updated 2026-10-08) · fetched 26 Oct 2026

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Every country, year and measure, with the source on each row.

Portrait of Klaus Jürgen Folz

About the author

Hello there, I’m Klaus Jürgen Folz. I studied Mechanical Engineering at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) in Brazil, and I work in Austria as a lead Python and Power BI developer. I built Data Mechanics because good decisions start with facts. Public data is often scattered, hard to find or locked behind paywalls, and too much of what we read about the world is biased. Here, every number is shown as it was published, next to its source, so anyone can check it, compare countries and leaders, and draw their own conclusions.

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