![\"Analysis\"](\"https:\/\/static.files.bbci.co.uk\/core\/website\/assets\/static\/news\/incident-types\/light-mode\/analysis.77b314ef10.svg\")
Singapore and Kuala Lumpur’s air is bad, but not the worst in the worldpublished at 07:27 BST<\/p>\nSingapore and Kuala Lumpur’s air is bad, but not the worst in the worldpublished at 07:27 BST<\/p>\n
07:27 BST<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/c7aa43d6-a006-468b-801c-69f7a9053efa.jpg.webp\")
Kelly Ng
Reporting from Singapore<\/p>\n
Several reports have emerged, on news outlets and social media platforms, that Singapore is the city with the worst air quality in the world right now.<\/p>\n
While it’s true that the air pollution here is quite bad, this characterisation may be misleading.<\/p>\n
Most of these reports are attributed to IQAir, a real-time monitoring platform which currently has Singapore on top of its “most polluted global major city ranking”, with an air quality index (AQI) of 217. <\/p>\n
Malaysia’s capital city Kuala Lumpur comes close in second place with an index of 210.<\/p>\n
IQAir’s fine print, however, defines this as a ranking of “approximately 120 major cities [including] some of the largest and most well-known metropolises around the world” \u2013 which makes this a subset of the world’s cities.<\/p>\n
![\"IQAir](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/66ba0182-d390-4eef-bbc5-d52c1b18ff59.png.webp\")
Image source, IQAir<\/p>\n
A separate monitoring platform AQI.In, which uses a similar air quality index as IQAir, has Sampit and Palangkaraya, two cities in Indonesia’s Kalimantan region, on the top of its “real-time most polluted cities in the world” ranking. <\/p>\n
This would make sense given that Kalimantan is where many of the wildfires have originated, and are still burning.<\/p>\n
In Sampit, the AQI is at a “hazardous” level of 334, while in Palangkaraya the index is at 297, in the “severe” range, according to AQI.In. <\/p>\n
This list contains 250 of the world’s most polluted cities, regardless of their size.<\/p>\n
![\"AQI.in](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/f2b74728-fdf6-4a08-bd1b-56c18c8c4a74.png.webp\")
Image source, AQI.in<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Singapore and Kuala Lumpur’s air is bad, but not the worst in the worldpublished at 07:27 BST 07:27…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":876054,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[192,79],"class_list":["post-876053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/876053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=876053"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/876053\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/876054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=876053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=876053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=876053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}