Milan mayor casts doubt on city’s ranking as third most polluted in world

IQAir labelled Milan ‘unhealthy’ over PM 2.5 levels triggering limits on daytime traffic

A row has broken out in Milan after data from a monitoring group ranked the northern Italian city long known for its poor air quality among the most polluted in the world, alongside Dhaka, Lahore and Chengdu.

The controversy began on Sunday, when the Swiss real time air quality website, IQAir, labelled Milan “unhealthy” after the level of fine particulate matter, or PM 2.5, in the city’s air was 24 times above the limit recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO), ranking the city third after Dhaka in Bangladesh and Lahore in Pakistan.