Polluted air is cutting average life expectancy by nearly four years and costing Pakistan the equivalent of 6.5% of GDP, according to a new national assessment. Lahore faces the heaviest burden, with PM2.5 concentrations estimated at 22 times the WHO guideline.

ISLAMABAD: Air pollution is linked to an estimated 128,000 deaths every year in Pakistan and is reducing average life expectancy by nearly four years, according to a new report by the Pakistan Air Quality Initiative (PAQI) that puts the economic cost of polluted air at the equivalent of 6.5% of the country's GDP.

The report presents air pollution not simply as an environmental problem, but as a growing public-health and economic burden affecting Pakistan's major cities.

Lahore faces the most severe conditions assessed in the report. PAQI estimates that prolonged exposure to polluted air could reduce life expectancy for residents by as much as seven years.

The city's annual average concentration of PM2.5 exceeds 110 micrograms per cubic metre, according to the report. That is around 22 times the World Health Organization's annual guideline of 5 micrograms per cubic metre.

Conditions become particularly severe during winter, when weather patterns can trap pollutants close to the ground and produce the dense smog that has become a recurring feature of life across Lahore and surrounding areas.

What is polluting Pakistan's cities?

The PAQI report, a national overview of air pollution, health risks, sources and solutions, attempts to produce a consistent picture of where pollution comes from across several major Pakistani cities.

Its analysis covers Lahore, Karachi, Islamabad, Rawalpindi and Peshawar.

According to PAQI, the assessment combines ground-level air-quality measurements and satellite observations with data on activities that produce emissions, including fuel consumption, vehicle numbers and types, industrial activity and emissions from different economic sectors.

It assesses pollutants including PM2.5, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides and sulphur dioxide.

The findings also show why Pakistan's air pollution problem cannot be explained by a single source.

In Lahore, transport accounts for an estimated 35% of primary particulate emissions, followed by industry at 28% and brick kilns at 17%, according to the report.

In Karachi, the pollution profile is different. Industrial activity accounts for an estimated 49%, with the report pointing to industrial clusters, heavy fuel oil use and port-related activity as major contributors.

In Islamabad and Rawalpindi, transport is estimated to account for 53% of emissions.

The differences matter because measures that work in one city may not address the largest sources in another.

Pollution does not stop at city boundaries

One of the report's most important recommendations concerns how Pakistan governs its air.

PAQI argues that pollution should increasingly be monitored and managed through “airsheds” rather than only through administrative boundaries.

An airshed is an area in which pollutants circulate through a shared mass of air. Emissions produced in one district can therefore affect communities somewhere else, depending on wind and weather conditions.

That makes air pollution difficult to solve through isolated city-level interventions.

A vehicle, factory, brick kiln or other pollution source may fall under one administrative jurisdiction while the air carrying its emissions moves into another.

The report therefore recommends coordinating policy, monitoring and pollution-control measures across areas that share the same air.

A health problem with an economic cost

The numbers also challenge the idea that cleaner air is primarily an environmental expense.

If PAQI's estimate of economic losses equivalent to 6.5% of GDP is considered alongside its estimates of premature deaths and lost life expectancy, air pollution becomes a question of healthcare, worker productivity and economic development as much as environmental management.

That is particularly important in cities such as Lahore, where severe winter pollution has increasingly disrupted schools, outdoor work and everyday life.

Pakistan's polluted air is often most visible when winter smog obscures skylines and pushes air-quality readings into dangerous territory.

The larger burden is less visible.

It accumulates in lungs, hospitals, lost working days and years of life.

And unlike the smog that eventually disappears when weather conditions change, those costs do not clear with the sky.