Greenpeace says South Korea saw the second highest level of ultrafine dust among members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development(OECD) in 2018. 

The nongovernmental environmental organization unveiled the assessment on Tuesday after studying data gathered by Air Visual, a company that researches information regarding air quality.

According to Greenpeace, South Korea’s ultrafine dust particle levels reached 24 micrograms per cubic meter on average last year. With this figure, South Korea placed 27th among 73 countries surveyed in terms of having the highest concentrations of ultrafine dust. South Korea came in second after Chile among OECD members.

Of the 73 countries, Bangladesh had the highest level of ultrafine dust particles with 97-point-one micrograms per cubic meter followed by Pakistan and India, while China placed 12th.

Greenpeace said South Asian countries saw high dust levels due to automobile exhaust fumes and slash-and-burn practices in the agriculture sector while East Asian countries witnessed high concentration levels due to the active use of coal. 

Greenpeace also found that last year, Seoul’s ultrafine dust level stood at 23 micrograms per cubic meter on average, the same as 2015. However, because of air stagnation resulting from climate change, days when ultrafine dust levels were categorized as “bad” in the capital grew from 44 to 61, and days categorized as “very bad” climbed from zero to four between 2015 and 2018.