A new study into global air quality by the independent website HouseFresh has found that Kazakhstan is home to some of the world’s cleanest towns. The report also notes that one Kazakh city is also among the most polluted.
Using data from IQAir’s 2024 research, HouseFresh examined the average PM2.5 level – the number of small particles in the air – for over 8,800 towns with a population over 10,000. It found that the world’s most polluted town is Byrnihat in India, with a PM2.5 level of 128.2 particles per cubic meter (µg/m³). The cleanest air globally is in the Kazakh town of Shu.
Shu, a rail freight hub in the country’s southeastern Zhambyl region, close to the border with Kyrgyzstan, had an average PM2 level of 1.5 µg/m³ in 2024.
Kazakhstan is in fact home to the three cleanest towns in Asia, with the next places after Shu being Zhezkazgan in the central Ulytau region (2.3 µg/m³), and the southwestern town of Beyneu, outside Mangystau (3.4 µg/m³).
Kazakhstan’s government has pledged that the country will become ‘climate neutral’ by 2060. It is aiming for its towns to follow the lead of cities such as New York and Beijing, which have more than halved their air pollution with measures such as cleaner public transport, modernized heating systems, and emissions regulation.
However, Kazakhstan generally ranks highly in lists of the most polluted countries, due to its large-scale and outdated industrial infrastructure. Dust in the south of the country can also affect air quality.
Due to this, the much larger central city of Karaganda, a center for Kazakhstan’s coal mining industry, remains one of the world’s most polluted cities. With average PM2.5 levels of 104.8 µg/m³ in 2024, the impact on the health of its half a million residents is equivalent to them smoking over 1,700 cigarettes per year.
