The Air Children in Almaty Breathe: Air Quality Near Schools and Kindergartens

Analytical Report for International Children’s Day

Prepared using PM2.5 sensor data from the Almaty Air Initiative monitoring network and publicly available sources.

Every morning, more than 422,000 children in Almaty go to school or kindergarten, with student enrollment increasing by 12,000–14,000 annually. Today, a child’s right to education is inseparable from the right to clean air. In reality, however, most schools and kindergartens are not equipped with air purifiers or filtration systems for incoming ventilation air. As a result, a significant part of the educational process takes place in environments with high concentrations of airborne pollutants. Children remain exposed both during classroom lessons and outdoor activities.

Air pollution in Kazakhstan not only affects children’s health and well-being but also claims lives. According to State of Global Air, in 2023 alone, air pollution was associated with the deaths of 265 newborns during their first 27 days of life, another 86 children under the age of five, and more than 20 children and adolescents aged 5–19. More than 70% of all child deaths in the country associated with elevated indoor and outdoor PM2.5 concentrations occurred among newborns, during the period when the body is most vulnerable to environmental exposure.

For reference:

PM2.5 refers to extremely fine solid particles and liquid droplets suspended in the air, with diameters smaller than 2.5 micrometers — approximately 30 times thinner than a human hair. Because of their small size, these particles are not trapped in the upper respiratory tract like ordinary dust. Instead, they penetrate deep into the lungs, enter the bloodstream, and reach other organs, including the heart and brain. This is why the World Health Organization (WHO) identifies PM2.5 as one of the most harmful components of urban air pollution and sets particularly strict guidelines: annual average concentrations should not exceed 5 µg/m³, while daily average concentrations should not exceed 15 µg/m³.

In Almaty, the annual average PM2.5 concentration in 2025 reached 31.2 µg/m³ — 6.3 times higher than the WHO guideline. During the winter months, which account for much of the academic year, concentrations rise even further. For children, this means regular exposure — both at home and at school — to pollution levels directly associated with increased risks of asthma, impaired lung development, and adverse cognitive outcomes.

Unlike adults, whose bodies are more resilient to external environmental factors, growing children are particularly sensitive to PM2.5 exposure. Even moderate exceedances of air quality guidelines can affect vital organ systems, creating a dangerous cumulative effect during their active development.

To mark International Children’s Day, Almaty Air Initiative set out to demonstrate the actual levels of air pollution children are exposed to during school hours and assess how safe the air is around schools and kindergartens.

This study analyzed air quality data near 1,008 kindergartens and 352 schools, including public and private educational institutions across Almaty.

What the Analysis Revealed: Reduce the Findings to Five Key Points, Focusing Exclusively on Children

• Nearly all schools and kindergartens in Almaty regularly experienced PM2.5 concentrations exceeding WHO guidelines during the heating season.
• 48.4% of school days (76 out of 157) were characterized by PM2.5 concentrations near schools and kindergartens exceeding Kazakhstan’s national daily average maximum permissible concentration (MPC) of 35 µg/m³.
• In the northern districts, PM2.5 concentrations exceeded the WHO daily guideline of 15 µg/m³ on 90% of school days during the heating season.
• The most polluted educational institutions are located in Alatau District, where average PM2.5 concentrations during the academic year exceed 70 µg/m³ (16 times higher than WHO recommendations).
• The difference in pollution levels between the most and least polluted educational institutions reached 3.5 times.

Why Are Children Particularly Vulnerable to Air Pollution?

It is important to recognize that a child’s body is a complex system undergoing intensive growth and development. Due to anatomical, physiological, and behavioral differences, children experience a substantially greater toxic burden than adults, even when they are in the same room or on the same street.

Several factors contribute to this increased vulnerability.

Physiological Factors That Increase Risk

Children’s physiological vulnerability to PM2.5 differs fundamentally from that of adults:

• Children breathe significantly more frequently than adults. While a resting adult takes approximately 12–16 breaths per minute, a primary school child takes around 20–25 breaths, and a preschool child may take up to 30. Due to their faster metabolism and the growing body’s greater oxygen requirements, children inhale 2–3 times more air per unit of body weight than adults.
• Children’s lungs are not yet fully developed. At birth, the lungs contain only 20–50% of the number of alveoli (the tiny air sacs responsible for gas exchange) found in adult lungs. Active lung tissue development continues into adolescence (ages 12–14). A study found that sustained exposure to air pollution during this period can impair lung development and permanently reduce maximum lung capacity. This deficit persists into adulthood, limiting physical capacity and increasing the future risk of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).
• Children’s brain protection mechanisms are not yet fully developed. The blood–brain barrier, which restricts the entry of toxins into the central nervous system, is more permeable during early childhood than in adulthood. This may allow fine particles, particularly those containing lead, manganese, and liquid-fuel combustion byproducts, to reach brain tissue. Medical research links PM2.5 exposure to neuroinflammation, disruption of neural connection development, and impaired cognitive development.
• Children spend more time outdoors — during walks, school breaks, physical education classes, and journeys to school — often at times when pollution concentrations are elevated. Infants, by contrast, spend most of their time indoors but are especially vulnerable to indoor air pollution when homes are heated with coal or wood.

The combination of these factors and elevated concentrations of harmful airborne substances contributes to a range of childhood diseases.

Prenatal Effects: Risks of Air Pollution During Fetal Development

Exposure to PM2.5 begins long before a child first attends school — during fetal development.

Recent research in public health and environmental science has demonstrated that the placenta is not an absolute protective barrier. Black carbon (soot) nanoparticles and associated heavy metals can penetrate the lung alveoli, enter the mother’s bloodstream, trigger systemic inflammation, and cross the placental barrier, accumulating in fetal tissues and umbilical cord blood.

According to the WHO, chronic maternal exposure to PM2.5 during pregnancy can contribute to restricted fetal growth, impaired placental development, premature birth, and extremely low birth weight.

According to State of Global Air, air pollution is associated with approximately 15.6% of all low-birth-weight cases worldwide. Children born with low birth weight are subsequently more vulnerable to respiratory infections, chronic inflammation, and impaired development of the lungs and nervous system.

This issue is particularly concerning for Almaty, where pregnant women living in the city’s northern districts may be exposed to PM2.5 concentrations of 50–80 µg/m³ for months during the heating season — levels considered harmful to health under WHO guidelines.

Respiratory Effects: The Development of Childhood Asthma

Continuous irritation of children’s developing airways by fine particulate matter (PM2.5) can trigger chronic swelling and underlying inflammatory processes. Children regularly exposed to PM2.5 face a higher risk of developing asthma, chronic bronchitis, and reduced lung function.

Children’s vulnerability is clearly reflected in official statistics from Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Health and Bureau of National Statistics. Respiratory diseases rank first among causes of childhood morbidity in children under 14.

For every 100,000 children in Kazakhstan, there are 47,800 medical visits related to respiratory diseases — 5.5 times more than visits for digestive system diseases (8,800).

Within the education system, these health impacts translate into social costs: studies show a direct relationship between daily smog peaks and corresponding increases in school absences due to illness.

Cognitive Effects

One of the most significant recent studies is a meta-analysis published in November 2024, which quantitatively assessed the effects of PM2.5 exposure on children’s cognitive abilities.

The researchers analyzed findings from dozens of international studies and concluded that each additional 1 µg/m³ of PM2.5 was correlated with an approximately 0.27-point decrease in a child’s overall IQ (p < 0.001).

The strongest association was observed for nonverbal IQ, an indicator related to attention, information processing, and learning ability. The estimated decrease was approximately 0.39 points for every additional 1 µg/m³ of PM2.5.

The authors emphasize that the effect is detectable even at concentrations below the US Environmental Protection Agency’s standard of 9 µg/m³. This suggests that there may effectively be no safe threshold for the cognitive effects of air pollution on children.

Applying these coefficients to Almaty’s air quality data, with an annual average PM2.5 concentration of approximately 31 µg/m³, suggests that chronic exposure throughout childhood could be associated with a loss of 7–8 IQ points.

Important disclaimer: This is a population-level estimate of the likely average effect across a group, not an individual prediction for any particular child. Actual outcomes depend on genetic factors, nutrition, duration of exposure, and other conditions.

Nevertheless, at the scale of a major city, such a shift could affect the cognitive development profile of entire generations.

Childhood Under Different Skies: Almaty’s Districts

As demonstrated in our previous research, air pollution in Almaty is distributed extremely unevenly.

Children growing up in different parts of the city experience fundamentally different atmospheric conditions and different levels of chronic exposure affecting their lungs and brains, even though they attend educational institutions within the same citywide system.

To assess the true extent of this inequality, we combined air pollution data with the locations of 365 schools and 1,008 kindergartens across Almaty.

For each institution, the average PM2.5 concentration was calculated using data from the nearest monitoring stations. All institutions were then plotted on an interactive map, allowing users to examine air pollution levels for each month of the academic year.

Link to the interactive map

The map shows that the highest pollution exposure occurs in the northern, northwestern, and northeastern parts of the city, where several risk factors overlap: a significant proportion of residential areas with coal-fired heating, proximity to industrial zones and combined heat and power (CHP) plants, and unfavorable atmospheric dispersion conditions.

A particularly striking contrast can be observed between the southern and northern parts of the city. Southern Almaty benefits to some extent from air currents descending from the mountains, while northern areas retain smog for longer periods during the heating season due to temperature inversions, poor atmospheric ventilation, and local topography.

October 2025 – April 2026. PM2.5 data from Almaty Air Initiative.

Over the entire analysis period, the highest average PM2.5 concentrations were recorded in Turksib (59.3 µg/m³), Alatau (56.3 µg/m³), and Zhetysu (52.7 µg/m³) districts. These levels were nearly 11 times higher than the WHO annual guideline of 5 µg/m³ and significantly exceeded Kazakhstan’s daily average maximum permissible concentration (MPC) of 35 µg/m³.

Together, Turksib and Alatau districts accounted for 65.6% of all hazardous hours recorded across the city during the season (14,909 out of 22,730 hours with PM2.5 concentrations exceeding 150 µg/m³). During these hours, airborne concentrations exceeded Kazakhstan’s daily MPC by more than four times — a level at which medical organizations recommend completely avoiding outdoor activities for all age groups. For children going outside during school breaks or attending physical education classes, this means direct exposure to extremely polluted air.

In Turksib District, monthly average PM2.5 concentrations exceeded Kazakhstan’s daily MPC in six out of the seven months analyzed. April was the only exception. A similar pattern was observed in Alatau and Zhetysu districts.

The difference in average seasonal PM2.5 concentrations between Turksib and Bostandyk districts was 28.6 µg/m³ — representing an almost twofold difference in chronic exposure (59.3 versus 31.1 µg/m³). During November, when pollution peaked, this gap widened to 54.5 µg/m³, or a 2.8-fold difference.

Even in the city’s relatively “cleanest” districts, air quality remains far from safe. In Bostandyk District, 67.1% of all hours during the heating season exceeded the WHO PM2.5 guideline, while 35.4% of days exceeded Kazakhstan’s national MPC. This means that Almaty effectively has no districts where children consistently breathe air that meets international health protection guidelines throughout the academic year.

When considering school days only (excluding weekends, public holidays, and school breaks), the overall picture remains largely unchanged. Across the entire observation period, Kazakhstan’s daily MPC of 35 µg/m³ was exceeded on an average of 51.8% of days (110 out of 212 days), compared with 48.4% of school days (76 out of 157) during the academic period. In other words, even after excluding weekends and school holidays, children were exposed to air pollution exceeding national sanitary standards on nearly every second school day.

Monthly Pollution Trends

Most of the academic year in Almaty coincides with the months of highest air pollution.

October 2025: The Beginning of the Heating Season. The monthly average PM2.5 concentration was 36.3 µg/m³. Even in the first month, northern districts exceeded Kazakhstan’s maximum permissible concentration (MPC): Turksib recorded 46.9 µg/m³ and Alatau 47.4 µg/m³. Southern districts remained below the national limit but already exceeded the WHO guideline by a factor of three.

November 2025: The Sharpest Increase of the Season. The monthly average PM2.5 concentration reached 54.4 µg/m³. In just one month, concentrations in Turksib District rose from 46.9 to 85.4 µg/m³ — an 82% increase. In Alatau District, they increased from 47.4 to 76.7 µg/m³ (+62%). This is the month when numerous heating stoves in privately owned homes begin operating simultaneously, while the first temperature inversions trap smog near the ground. Starting in November, almost all districts exceeded Kazakhstan’s daily MPC. Bostandyk was the only district where the November average (30.9 µg/m³) remained below the national limit.

December 2025: Peak Pollution for Most Districts. The monthly average PM2.5 concentration reached 62.4 µg/m³. Concentrations corresponding to the AQI “Unhealthy” category were recorded in six of the city’s eight districts. Turksib reached 85.8 µg/m³, Alatau 77.1 µg/m³, and Zhetysu 75.1 µg/m³. Concentrations in Almaly and Nauryzbay ranged from 55 to 67 µg/m³, while Medeu and Bostandyk recorded levels between 41 and 46 µg/m³.

January 2026: A Plateau of Severe Air Pollution. The monthly average PM2.5 concentration was 57.7 µg/m³. Three northern districts — Turksib (73.6 µg/m³), Alatau (71.4 µg/m³), and Zhetysu (70.3 µg/m³) — maintained concentrations above 70 µg/m³. This was the first month after the winter holidays: children returned to school not to improved conditions, but to persistently high levels of smog. Medeu and Bostandyk reached their seasonal peaks in January, at 46.3 and 43.8 µg/m³, respectively.

February 2026: The First Noticeable Decline. Average PM2.5 concentrations decreased by approximately 30% compared with January (40.2 µg/m³ versus 57.7 µg/m³). However, Turksib (53.6 µg/m³) and Alatau (51.5 µg/m³) remained in the red AQI zone.

March 2026: A Continued Decline. The monthly average PM2.5 concentration was 35.4 µg/m³. Turksib remained above Kazakhstan’s MPC, with a concentration of 44.4 µg/m³. Most southern districts fell below the national limit for the first time since October. The pollution gap between the northern and southern parts of the city began to narrow.

April 2026: The Only Relatively Safe Month. The monthly average PM2.5 concentration fell to 16.0 µg/m³. For the first time, all districts recorded concentrations below Kazakhstan’s MPC. Southern and central districts (Bostandyk, Medeu, Almaly, and Auezov) fell below the WHO daily guideline of 15 µg/m³. In northern districts, April concentrations still ranged from 17 to 21 µg/m³, exceeding the WHO daily guideline but, for the first time in six months, without reaching critical levels. Meanwhile, the academic year continued until the end of May.

Overall, five out of the seven months of the heating season recorded average PM2.5 concentrations exceeding or approaching Kazakhstan’s MPC. April was the only relatively “safe” month.

In Almaty, there are effectively no districts where children consistently breathe air that meets health protection standards throughout the academic year.

For children, this means fundamentally different levels of daily pollution exposure throughout the school year — from their journey to school and morning outdoor activities at kindergarten to outdoor physical education classes and the journey home in the evening.

This demonstrates that the greatest pollution burden is distributed unevenly, disproportionately affecting children who live and study in Almaty’s northern districts. In effect, a child’s district of residence determines not only the quality of their urban environment but also their daily exposure to polluted air.

Which Schools and Kindergartens Are Most Vulnerable?

An institution-level analysis provides a more detailed picture of district-level pollution patterns and reveals an important distinction: although Turksib is generally considered the most polluted district based on seasonal averages, the ranking of individual educational institutions tells a different story. Alatau District dominates the top positions among both schools and kindergartens.

It is important to emphasize that these data do not reflect the quality of management or resources at any specific institution. Being in the anti-ranking does not mean that a school is poorly managed or under-resourced, it simply means that it is located in an area where the air is, on average, more polluted.

Kindergartens

Among Almaty’s 1,008 kindergartens, the institutions located in the zone of maximum PM2.5 exposure are predominantly in Alatau district. The five institutions with the highest seasonal concentrations are all located in the same district.

Of the 20 kindergartens with the highest seasonal exposure, 12 are in Alatau district, 5 are in Turksib district, and 2 are in Zhetysu district. All 20 exceed the WHO guideline by 12 times or more and fall into the “Unhealthy” AQI category based on their seasonal average.

For a three-year-old child attending Balausa kindergarten or Nursery-Kindergarten No. 1, where the concentration is 71.3 µg/m³, this means that every morning in the playground, every daytime walk, and every time spent outdoors takes place in air that the WHO classifies as harmful to health. Under the regulations, kindergartens are required to take children outside twice a day for a total of up to 2-3 hours. These hours are spent in air with 60-70 µg/m³ PM2.5 concentrations.

Schools

The picture is similar among Almaty’s 352 schools, and here again, Alatau district unexpectedly comes out on top. School No. 156 in Alatau district ranks first, with a concentration of 71.3 µg/m³, the same level as the top-ranking kindergartens.

Of the 20 schools with the highest seasonal exposure, 8 are in Alatau district, 7 are in Turksib district, 2 are in Zhetysu district, and one each is located in Almaly and Nauryzbay districts.

It is notable that schools from Almaly and Nauryzbay districts also appear on the list.

• Gymnasium No. 147 in Almaly district records an average of 64.6 µg/m³, which is 52% higher than the average daily value for its district during the analysis period, 42.6 µg/m³. The school is located near Almaty-2 railway station. We have previously written about the situation around the station: coal burning for heating railway carriages and the use of diesel create a constant pollution background that does not disappear on weekends or during school holidays. On the most polluted day of 2025, December 7, the average daily concentration near the station reached 207.5 µg/m³, with a maximum peak of 774 µg/m³, this is 4.8 times higher than RoK one-time maximum permissible concentration (160 µg/m³).
• QSI Almaty International School in Kalkaman shows 62.8 µg/m³ against a district average of 36.9 µg/m³, an excess of 70%. The school is surrounded by private housing and is located along a busy road, Abay Avenue.

This concentration of the most polluted educational institutions in the northern part of the city is not accidental. For some institutions in Alatau and Turksib districts, one of the key risk factors is their proximity to major transport arteries and logistics corridors, where emissions remain high almost throughout the day. In the northern districts, this is compounded by emissions from thermal power plants and heating sources in the private sector, both within the city and beyond its boundaries. As a result, even within the same district, PM2.5 concentrations can vary significantly depending on proximity to industrial sites, busy roads, or dense low-rise residential areas.

The gap between the city’s cleanest school, located in Medeu district, with an average daily concentration of 19.7 µg/m³ during the analysis period, and the most polluted school in Alatau district, with 71.3 µg/m³, is 50 µg/m³, or 3.5 times. The form of ownership, whether public or private, does not matter: in Turksib district, private kindergartens breathe the same air as public ones.

When And at What Time is the Air at Its Worst?

Daily trends

The daily PM2.5 cycle in Almaty shows a very pronounced difference between the city’s northern, central, and southern districts. These differences are especially important for understanding the hours when children are most exposed to polluted air.

The sharpest contrast is observed between the northern districts, Turksib, Alatau, and Zhetysu, and the southern districts, Bostandyk and Medeu.

Even during the night and early morning hours, the northern part of the city is significantly more polluted. For example, around midnight, average seasonal PM2.5 concentrations in Turksib district exceed 80 µg/m³, while in Bostandyk district they are around 26 µg/m³. In other words, at night and in the early morning, the northern districts are approximately 2.5-3 times more polluted than the southern districts.

Morning: It is particularly important that this gap persists during the hours when children arrive at schools and kindergartens, roughly from 7:00 to 9:00 a.m. During this time, concentrations in Turksib and Alatau districts remain around 40-46 µg/m³, while in the southern part of the city they fall to 19-22 µg/m³. In other words, in the morning, a child in northern Almaty is effectively breathing air with a PM2.5 concentration more than twice as high as that inhaled by a child in the southern districts.

This contrast is primarily linked to the city’s topography and air circulation patterns. At night, cold polluted air flows downhill and accumulates in the northern part of Almaty, where ventilation is significantly poorer. Under winter temperature inversion conditions, pollutants become “trapped” in the near-surface layer of air. This is why the northern part of the city retains high concentrations for longer after nighttime smog accumulation.

During the day, the picture changes. From around 11:00 to 16:00, concentrations in the northern districts decline noticeably, and differences between districts become smaller. During this period, the central and southern districts begin to show relatively higher values compared with the morning hours. For example, in Bostandyk district, concentrations may increase on average from 18-20 µg/m³ in the morning to 40-43 µg/m³ during the day, almost doubling. In Medeu district, values also rise noticeably, from 21 to 40 µg/m³. But in Turksib, Zhetysu, and Alatau districts, morning values of ~38-46 µg/m³ decrease to daytime levels of ~35-37 µg/m³.

This is linked to the intensification of daytime traffic, local emissions, and the dispersion and mixing of air, which carries pollutants between different parts of the city. During the day, the north gradually “unloads,” while central districts begin to experience a more pronounced impact from traffic flows and urban activity.

For children, this means that even if the southern districts appear relatively better in the morning, concentrations may rise significantly during daytime walks, physical education classes, and time spent outdoors.

Evening. However, the sharpest change occurs in the evening. After 17:00, northern Almaty begins to accumulate pollution very rapidly. In Turksib district, concentrations increased on average from 37 µg/m³ during the day to 91 µg/m³ in the evening, more than doubling within just a few hours. Alatau district shows an almost identical pattern. At the same time, the southern districts remain much more stable: evening values in Bostandyk district rise only to 32-40 µg/m³, while in Medeu district they reach roughly 40-43 µg/m³.

Thus, in the evening, the difference between the north and the south again reaches almost a threefold level.

This evening period is especially dangerous for children. It is the time when they return home from school, sports sections, and other activities. Children are exposed to polluted air while physically active, walking, waiting for transport, and spending time near roads. For a child’s body, such peaks are particularly harmful because high PM2.5 concentrations coincide with intensive breathing and a greater volume of inhaled air.

Pollution by Day of the Week

Analysis of PM2.5 distribution by day of the week shows that air pollution in Almaty has not only a seasonal and daily rhythm, but also a clear weekly cycle. Concentrations vary substantially from weekdays to weekends, with the most unfavorable situation observed on Sunday and Monday.

Average PM2.5 concentrations near schools and kindergartens reach 56.4 µg/m³ on Sundays, the highest value of the week. By comparison, the average concentration on Wednesday is around 36.6 µg/m³. Thus, Sunday pollution levels are approximately 1.5 times higher than those in the middle of the week.

Even the lowest weekly values remain significantly above the WHO guideline (15 µg/m³). This means that children are exposed to chronic air pollution almost every day, regardless of the day of the week.

It is especially important that Sunday turns out to be the most polluted day despite the relative decrease in traffic load. This points to the dominant role of heating-related factors during the winter period. As a result, pollutants gradually accumulate in the near-surface air layer over the weekend.

That is why, on Monday, the city often enters the new week with an already high accumulated level of PM2.5.

This is particularly visible in the matrix showing pollution distribution by days of the week and months.

The matrix shows that in winter, especially in November, December, and January, almost all Sundays are regularly marked in categories corresponding to “Unhealthy” and “Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups” air quality. In the northern districts of the city, such episodes are observed almost every week. This is especially evident in Turksib district, where the average Sunday in November reached the threshold of the “Hazardous” category: 128.7 µg/m³, which is 8.5 times higher than the WHO daily guideline and 25 times higher than the annual guideline.

Monday becomes the next critical day, with 49 µg/m³, more than three times the WHO recommended level and around 40% higher than Kazakhstan’s maximum permissible concentration. After a polluted Sunday, children return to schools and kindergartens under conditions of already accumulated smog. At the same time, transport activity rises sharply on Monday morning, with more cars, public transport, and school-related trips. As a result, pollution does not have time to disperse. Instead, it intensifies.

It is precisely the combination of residual pollution after the weekend and the morning traffic peak that makes Monday one of the most unfavorable days for children’s health.

The regular, repeated nature of this exposure is particularly dangerous. The weekly cycle shows that children in Almaty face not isolated pollution episodes, but sustained chronic exposure that repeats week after week throughout the cold season.

Interestingly, in the middle of the week, especially on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, concentrations decrease somewhat. This is associated with more stable weather conditions and partial dispersion of accumulated pollution. However, even on these days, the air near educational institutions remains substantially polluted.

Saturday again shows an increase in PM2.5 concentrations. This may be linked both to changes in traffic flows and to the gradual accumulation of pollutants ahead of the Sunday peak.

Cigarette Equivalent Over the School Period

To convey the scale of children’s chronic exposure to polluted air, we use an international method that converts PM2.5 concentrations into a cigarette equivalent. This is not a literal comparison between smoking and urban air pollution. Rather, it is a tool that translates abstract µg/m³ values into a more understandable image of chronic exposure.

For reference: This approach is based on estimates by the Berkeley Earth research group and epidemiological data on the health effects of PM2.5. In a simplified interpretation, an average daily PM2.5 concentration of around 22 µg/m³ can be considered comparable, in terms of health risk, to smoking one cigarette per day. (Source)

Importantly, this methodology is designed for an average adult. The baseline values below therefore apply specifically to adults. For children, they should be treated only as a lower-bound estimate.

The calculation included only actual school days: Monday to Saturday, excluding Sundays, public holidays, and school holidays. From October 2025 to April 2026, there were 157 such days. The calculation is based on the average daily PM2.5 concentration in each district over the entire analysis period.

Harm equivalent in cigarettes smoked for an adult near schools and kindergartens in Almaty

The result shows not only a high overall level of exposure, but also a sharp geographic inequality. A child attending a school or kindergarten in Turksib district accumulates, over one heating season, a dose equivalent to 423 cigarettes, or 2.7 cigarettes per day for an adult. In Bostandyk district, the equivalent is 222 cigarettes, or 1.4 cigarettes per day.

During peak months in Turksib district, the equivalent rises even higher: in December, when the average daily PM2.5 concentration reached 85.8 µg/m³, the adult equivalent was already 3.9 cigarettes per day. In January, with a monthly average of 73.6 µg/m³, the equivalent was 3.3 cigarettes per day.

At the same time, it is important to consider that children do not simply breathe the same air as adults. Proportionally, they receive a higher dose. Because of their higher breathing rate and lower body weight, children inhale 2-3 times more air per kilogram of body weight than adults in the same environment. (WHO and UNICEF). This means that the actual physiological dose of pollutants per unit of body weight is significantly higher for a child than the calculated adult-based estimate.

Preschool children are in the most vulnerable position. Preschool standards require children to spend time outdoors, usually once or twice a day: before lunch and after the daytime nap. In total, a child in kindergarten may spend up to two to three hours outdoors each day, in almost any weather. In Turksib and Alatau districts, where average daily PM2.5 concentrations exceed 56-59 µg/m³, these outdoor periods take place in air classified by the AQI as “Unhealthy for all groups,” the same category in which international organizations recommend limiting outdoor activity even for healthy adults. For a three-year-old child with an immature respiratory system, this means regular, repeated exposure day after day, which is neither offset nor fully recovered from overnight.

Conclusion 

The analysis shows that air pollution in Almaty has become an integral part of the everyday environment in which hundreds of thousands of children grow, study, and spend most of their day. Large part of the school year takes place under conditions of chronic exceedance of WHO recommendations for PM2.5. The heaviest burden falls on the northern districts of the city, yet even the most favorable parts of Almaty remain far from safe pollution levels.

What is particularly alarming is not only the level of PM2.5, but also its persistent nature. Exposure is repeated every day: in the morning on the way to school, during outdoor walks and activities, and in the evening on the way home.

For children, polluted air becomes part of the environment in which they grow up and interact with the city.

The air around schools and kindergartens is directly linked to children’s health, development, and quality of life. The safety of this air is gradually becoming one of the key issues of Almaty’s urban environment and should be considered part of public health and child protection policy. Air quality near educational institutions is no longer only an environmental issue. It is a question of the conditions in which the health and future of the city’s next generation are being shaped.

Against the backdrop of Almaty’s continued population growth and the increasing number of children in schools and kindergartens, the significance of this problem will only grow. Today, new educational institutions are often built in areas with the highest PM2.5 burden, while a large share of children spend years of schooling under conditions of chronic smog.

Reducing this burden requires a systemic approach. Possible areas of action include:

• accelerated reduction of emissions from coal-based heating in the private sector;
• reduction of transport emissions around educational institutions;
• consideration of air quality when planning and building new schools and kindergartens;
• development of an urban air monitoring system near educational institutions and indoors;
• introduction of response protocols for schools and kindergartens during episodes of high air pollution, including:
• use of air purifiers in classrooms or installation of air filtration in ventilation systems;
• restriction of children’s outdoor activity during periods of high pollution;
• greater transparency and accessibility of air quality data for parents and teachers.

 

Methodological Note

The analysis is based on continuous measurements of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) recorded by sensors from the Almaty Air Initiative (AAI) network and open sources from October to April 2025. The network includes around 200 sensors, some of which are installed directly near educational institutions or within a radius of 300-500 meters from them.

The analysis uses data from 1,360 educational institutions, including 352 schools and 1,008 kindergartens, as well as more than 5,000 hourly PM2.5 observations. For institutions located near sensors, average daily PM2.5 concentrations were calculated directly. For more distant institutions, a weighted average PM2.5 value was calculated using data from the 3-5 nearest sensors through the inverse distance weighting method (IDW). This is a standard spatial interpolation method used in epidemiological exposure studies.

Regulatory thresholds used in this material:

• WHO recommendations: annual average PM2.5 – 5 µg/m³; daily average – 15 µg/m³ (WHO Global Air Quality Guidelines, 2021).
• Kazakhstan’s maximum permissible concentration: daily average PM2.5 – 35 µg/m³; one-time maximum – 160 µg/m³.
• AQI (US EPA scale): Good <9 µg/m³,  Moderate 9–35, Unhealthy for Sensitive 35–55 , Unhealthy 55–125,  Very Unhealthy 125–225,  Hazardous >225 µg/m³.