Vancouverites indirectly smoke the equivalent of 59 cigarettes annually by just breathing the air, according to a new study.
Due to poor air quality, residents of B.C.'s biggest city smoke nearly three packs of cigarettes each year without ever taking a drag.
HouseFresh, an indoor air quality improvement company, recently calculated the number of cigarettes people in Canada and around the world are indirectly smoking due to poor air quality.
The company used data on average PM2.5 concentrations in cities worldwide from the AirQuality Index and "converted it to the equivalent number of cigarettes passively smoked per year in terms of negative health effects using a formula from Berkeley Earth."
According to Berkeley Earth, smoking one cigarette per day is the rough equivalent of a PM2.5 level of 22 µg/m3.
"We took the average daily median AQI PM2.5 during 2022 as the average AQI PM2.5 in the city. We converted that value to cigarettes as per Berkeley’s Earth rule-of-thumb and multiplied the result by 365 to obtain how many cigarettes you’ve indirectly smoked during a year," says HouseFresh.
Vancouver weather and air quality affected by pollution
While Canada has some of the best air quality in the world, the majority of Canadians live in areas where the airborne fine particulate matter exceeds the World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines.
But residents of the Great White North are indirectly "smoking" far fewer cigarettes than the people who live in other major cities around the world.
Montreal is the most polluted city in Canada, with locals indirectly smoking 124 cigarettes annually, according to the study. Windsor wasn't far behind, with residents of the Ontario city "smoking" 123 of them each year. Another city in Ontario, Hamilton, came third, with locals smoking 116.
But these figures pale in comparison to the most polluted cities in the world.
In Dhaka, Bangladesh, for example, people "smoke" the equivalent of an astonishing 1,176 cigarettes annually due to poor air quality. Baghdad, Iraq was the second-worst, with residents indirectly smoking 1,009 cigarettes.
On the other end of the spectrum, Bern, Switzerland, has the cleanest air of any capital city in the world, with locals indirectly smoking 11 cigarettes each year.
According to the data, Vancouver has the best air quality of any major city in Canada.
