The report also shows that air pollution from residential wood heating dropped nearly 40 per cent between 2014 and 2023.
The air in Montreal last year was the most polluted it has been since 2015, thanks to Quebec’s historic forest fire season.
The city’s annual air quality report, published this week, shows fine particle pollution spiked in 2023 to its highest level in eight years.
Air quality in Montreal improved between 2014 and 2016, partly because many coal-fired thermal power stations closed in the United States.
At the time, Montreal had the worst air quality in the world.