A vanity among residents of greater Los Angeles is that they breath the world’s worst air.

Not even close.

It might have been true for a stretch in the 1950s and 1960s, but strict controls on automobile emissions have turned SoCal air from horrible to just bad — and that doesn’t cut it among cities with truly awful air.

Los Angeles doesn’t make this list of the 10 world cities with the planet’s worst air.

Interestingly (disturbingly?), I have spent significant chunks of time in three of the top-10.

1. Beijing. That China’s capital is tied for first place (with New Delhi) does not surprise me. After three weeks in Beijing, in 2008, for the Summer Olympics, I shudder to think any city could have more alarming air pollution.

The sun on many days is a sickly orange star without the power to fight its way through tons of air-borne crap. And I was in Beijing when the air was not as bad as usual because lots of industry had been shut down for the Olympics. Still, four U.S. cyclists made news there for getting off the plane with masks on, and I couldn’t blame them.

As I wrote in that link, what I found most memorable, upon arrival in Beijing, was how horrific the air was. When the sun is orange … it gets your attention.

And in looking at the Beijing wiki site, we found this link to an AFP story from 2011 about the day the air pollution levels were off the charts. Literally.

4. Mexico City. Californians have seen the stories, of wealthy families sending their kids out of Mexico City for chunks of the year because the air is so hideous. Mexico City is surrounded by mountains, and is at altitude, and the thin air is loaded with gunk, including emissions from some of the most prolific smog-belching vehicles in the world.

9. Hong Kong. I lived in the former British crown colony for four months in late 2008 and early 2009, and the air is appalling. I can vouch for that. The issues here, though, have a lot to do with the mainland of China — Hong Kong is downwind (as well as downstream) from Guangzhou (the former Canton), which like all Chinese cities is a pollution nightmare.

Hong Kong’s issues are exacerbated (especially on the island) by the hills south of the main living areas on the northern strip of the island. The pollution hits those hills and pauses, and sits over the city.

The big difference between HK and the other cities on this list? As far as I can tell, it is the only city which readily concedes it has huge problems and is trying to do something about them.

HK has numerous stations in the city which measure air pollution on an hourly basis. That, at least, gives people who breathe a chance to look at a hard number and decide if they really want to jog or walk or continue to breathe.

I’m writing about this today because the air in the UAE seems palpably worse than when I arrived, in October of 2009. In Abu Dhabi, we seem to swing back and forth from wind-blown dust storms that put tons of dirt and sand into the air (and into lungs) … and still, airless days when the island bakes in its own industry and motor-vehicle goop from smog-belching vehicles, many of them built in India.

I expect we at The National will be writing more stories about this. We already know that Abu Dhabi has a remarkably high level of asthma.

Los Angeles? No longer competitive, on the world smog scale. Which is good news for SoCal.

Meanwhile, note how many of the top 10 are in the “emerging” parts of the world. Nearly all of them. And note that four of the top 10 are in China.

Which reminds me of a Jared Diamond comment in one of his books: That a China consuming resources and polluting them, on a First World level … will destroy the planet’s ecosystem.

Certainly, we can understand the governments of former Third World countries turning their backs on the pollution that accompanies their struggles to improve the lives of people. And the people usually will take their chances with bad air if it means they do not have to starve.

But this is not going to end well, if we don’t get a rope around it.