Armidale has the worst air pollution in Australia, with a new report revealing the New South Wales town exceeds the air safety guidelines of the World Health Organisation by more than double.
Located midway between Sydney and Brisbane, Armidale is known for its proliferation of wood burning heaters to ward off cold temperatures during winter.
Bathurst, also in NSW, is ranked second-worst, with the suburb of Ludmilla in Darwin rounding out Australia's top-three.
Cockburn near Freemantle in Western Australia sits fourth, with Bungendore, east of Canberra, fifth.
At the other end of spectrum, the small Tasmanian fishing town of St Helens had the cleanest air in Australia, according to the report, with Judbury, Emu River, Mornington and Gretna ensuring Tasmania clean-swept the top five.
The rankings, from IQAir, a company that tracks global air quality, certainly more than justify Tasmania's official tourism slogan, "Come down for air."
Rocky Carosi, who has lived in St Helens in north-eastern Tasmania for 31 years, said few locals would be surprised by the news.
"We are in the path of the Roaring Forties so we bit a get of wind (and) I guess that keeps things fairly clean and pure here," he told 9News.com.au.
Mr Carosi, a retired big game fishing charter boat operator, described St Helens as a "beautiful" little pocket on the island.
"It has fantastic beaches, lovely waterways and good access to the mountains," he said.
"When Tasmanians travel to the mainland cities I think they realise the qualities of what we have got here."
The IQAir report found that average annual air pollution in every country around the world — and 97 per cent of global cities — exceeded WHO's air quality guidelines, which were designed to help governments craft regulations to protect public health.
Oceania has the cleanest overall air quality in the world, the report found.
Forty-six cities in Australia, one in New Zealand, and one in New Caledonia all met the WHO PM2.5 air quality guideline of 5 µg/m3.
However, a further 63 cities in Australia and 20 in New Zealand failed to meet this standard, impacting the health of over 21 million people.
Of the 117 countries analysed, Australia was ranked ninth best country for air quality in the world, four places ahead of New Zealand.
Canberra was judged fourth cleanest air of the 107 worldwide capital cities monitored.
Although Armidale had the worst air quality in Australia, its air is roughly eight times cleaner than subcontinent megacities New Delhi in India and Dhaka in Bangladesh.
India, Pakistan and Bangladesh were among the countries with the worst air pollution, exceeding WHO guidelines by at least 10 times.
The research is the first major global air quality report based on WHO's new annual air pollution guidelines, which were updated in September 2021.
The new guidelines halved the acceptable concentration of fine particulate matter — or PM 2.5 — from 10 down to 5 micrograms per cubic metre.
PM 2.5 is the tiniest pollutant yet also among the most dangerous. When inhaled, it travels deep into lung tissue where it can enter the bloodstream.
It comes from sources like the burning of fossil fuels, dust storms and wildfires, and has been linked to a number of health threats including asthma, heart disease and other respiratory illnesses.
Millions of people die each year from air quality issues.
In 2016, around 4.2 million premature deaths were associated with fine particulate matter, according to WHO.
If the 2021 guidelines had been applied that year, WHO found there could have been nearly 3.3 million fewer pollution-related deaths.
With agencies
