nbcnews.com Photos of the Vietnamese capital, home to almost 9 million people, show the environmental cost of the Southeast Asian nation’s explosive growth.
Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam, topped global air pollution charts over the winter.Spike Johnson for NBC News
June 29, 2025, 4:15 PM GMT+7 By Spike Johnson
HANOI, Vietnam — Hanoi has no horizon.
Blocky apartment towers dissolve into gray fog in the Vietnamese capital, as barges carrying sand inch down the Red River toward makeshift jetties. At street level, the city blurs as if it’s covered in film. The air stings your eyes and smells of chemicals, like chlorine but not quite. When the sun does punch through, it hangs like a red beach ball against the silver sky.
This winter, Hanoi topped global air pollution charts, not once, but repeatedly, exposing the environmental cost of Vietnam’s explosive growth, and briefly earning it the title of the world’s most polluted city.
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