United Nations, 5 September 2025

Air pollution is on the rise – but not everywhere, says UN weather agency

As billions continue to breathe polluted air that causes more than 4.5 million premature deaths every year, UN climate experts on Friday highlighted how damaging microscopic smoke particles from wildfires play their part, travelling halfway across the world.

“Air quality respects no boundaries,” said Lorenzo Labrador, Scientific Officer at the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). “The smoke and the pollution that issues from the wildfires in this record-breaking season in the Iberian Peninsula has been detected over Western Europe already [and]…can travel basically throughout the rest of the European continent.”

Presenting the latest WMO Air Quality and Climate Bulletin which crunches data from different global datasets, Mr. Labrador announced a continuing pattern of pollution “degradation” worldwide.