One UK city is so polluted one study has claimed living there is the equivalent to smoking 189 cigarettes a year.
A lot has changed since the Great Smog of London, and Brits are far more aware of the adverse health effects air pollution can have.
But one study has claimed that living in some cities in the UK is akin to passively smoking over 150 cigarettes.
Northampton tops the table, where living in the East Midlands town is equal to smoking 189 cigarettes a year for residents - such is the impact it’s having on their health.
Nottingham is the second worst place, according to the figures crunched by HouseFresh, with locals there passively smoking 181 cigarettes a year.
Bristol is third with the equivalent of 163 cigarettes a year, followed by Southampton, and Hull making the top five worst places in the UK.
According to one 2017 study by the British Heart Foundation, they linked one in every 20 deaths in Northampton to air pollution.
The charity later warned that from 2020 to 2030, 1,700 deaths in Northamptonshire would be caused by air pollution.
Air quality varied significantly across the UK and the findings included the fact that toxic particulate matter was mostly found in the southeast of England, with the lowest in the North of England and in Scotland.
Such is the gulf in some places that moving from Northampton to Edinburgh would see the number of cigarettes passively smoked drop by over 100.
To get their data, HouseFresh reviewed the PM2.5 concentrations in towns and cities worldwide and converted this to the equivalent number of cigarettes passively smoked every year, using a formula from Berkeley Earth.
Worst areas in UK for air pollution - amount of cigarettes passively smoked
Northampton - 189 cigarettes a year
Nottingham - 181 cigarettes a year
Bristol - 163 cigarettes a year
Southampton - 162 cigarettes a year
Kingston upon Hull - 161 cigarettes a year
Cardiff - 160 cigarettes a year
Southend-on-Sea - 157 cigarettes a year
Norwich - 157 cigarettes a year
Leeds - 155 cigarettes a year
London - 154 cigarettes a year
Stoke - 149 cigarettes a year
Birmingham - 145 cigarettes a year
Swansea - 145 cigarettes a year
Leicester - 144 cigarettes a year
Manchester - 143 cigarettes a year
Sheffield - 141 cigarettes a year
Portsmouth - 140 cigarettes a year
Preston - 135 cigarettes a year
Liverpool - 134 cigarettes a year
Plymouth - 133 cigarettes a year
Coventry - 131 cigarettes a year
Belfast - 123 cigarettes a year
Newcastle - 122 cigarettes a year
Newport - 116 cigarettes a year
Reading - 111 cigarettes a year
Glasgow - 92 cigarettes a year
Edinburgh - 87 cigarettes a year
However, whilst some UK towns and cities came out badly they paled in comparison to places abroad.
Residents in Dhaka, Bangladesh, were found to be passively smoking 1176 cigarettes, due to huge levels of pollution.
Similarly Baghdad, Iraq, also broke the thousand mark - with 1009 cigarettes passively smoked a year.
At the other end, Bern, Switzerland, came out with the cleanest air of any capital city with residents passively smoking the equivalent of just 11 cigarettes a year.
Riga, in Latvia, and Brasilia, Brazil, also came out as the best capitals for low levels of air pollution.
HouseFresh said: “While the global smoking rate has fallen over the past two decades, many of the gains in health have been offset by increasing air pollution. Exposure to air pollution severely impacts the respiratory system and can have negative health impacts equivalent to smoking multiple cigarettes a day.
“In Dhaka, Bangladesh, residents indirectly smoke 1176 cigarettes a year due to poor air quality – the most of any capital city.”
