And you think Beijing is polluted?

China is back in the thick of smog season, so to speak. Beijing was on high alert as a new round of heavy smog descended on the capital and other parts of northern China over the weekend. An air monitor index released by the US embassy in Beijing breached a level that qualifies as what the locals call “crazy bad” air. Top mainland Chinese officials, meanwhile, admitted that China tops the world in almost all types of air pollution .

For people in this region, bombarded with media reports of cancelled flights and smoggy Beijing skies, extreme pollution can often seem a uniquely Chinese problem, the collateral damage of its breakneck development. Yet, China is hardly the only one in Asia bankrolling economic growth with shrinking lifespans.

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New Delhi was declared one of the most polluted cities on earth last month after toxic smog engulfed the Indian capital, forcing schools to close and offices to advise workers to work from home. For days, smoke from Diwali crackers refused to leave the flat plains of Delhi as winter set in. More smoke wafted in stealthily from crop wastes that farmers were burning in the neighbouring areas. The city, already gasping for breath with peaking levels of vehicular emissions, construction dust, and garbage and biomass combustion, looked and smelt like it was bombed out.

Ironically, just a few months back in May, an environment official I met in Delhi told me ecstatically, “Neither Delhi nor Beijing.” The World Health Organisation (WHO) had just released its latest global ambient air pollution report and he had come to know that the two smog-tainted Asian cities were not on the list of the worst offenders. His jubilation, however, was ill-placed – the list of the 10 most polluted cities in the world, topped by Zabol in Iran, was still all-Asian, barring Bamenda in Cameroon.

WATCH: China’s air pollution returns as heavy smog engulfs Shanghai