Midlife in Armenia (This might be a crisis)

I turned 37 this year and, according to Armenia’s life expectancy tables, that places me on the wrong side of midlife. 

I knew moving here would change my life; I did not think it would redefine its timeline. Of course, I say this half jokingly. Statistics are messy, and no single chart can account for where I grew up, how I eat, how much alcohol I consume, whether I smoke, how much I walk the dog or the family health history that quietly shadows any actuarial guess. But jokes aside, there is something sobering about realizing that in Armenia, by several measures, you cross into ‘midlife’ much earlier than you might in Toronto or Boston.

I did not move here to live longer. First and foremost, I moved here because I prefer my life here. I prefer the pace, the proximity and the fact that Armenian life is not something to explain, justify or consciously ‘maintain.’ It is simply there. Armenian is not perceived or curated; it is spoken, argued in, written badly on signs and beautifully in books. When I wrote about five years of being here, I tried to capture how living in Armenia replaces abstract ideas of identity with the texture of daily life: the bureaucracy, the neighbors, the frustration, the small joys and the view of Ararat that still catches you off guard, even when you think you’ve grown used to it.

What I did not fully grasp when we moved in 2020 was that everyday life here would also mean checking an air quality app before deciding whether to walk to the store. Or that our small act of ‘settling in’ would include installing an air quality sensor on our balcony and watching it join a cluster of blinking dots on a public map, each one owned by someone else who is quietly worried about what we all are breathing.

Earlier this year, I was interviewed about the air quality here and about that app with the little avatar whose mask thickens as pollution rises. That cartoon figure quickly became part of our routine. Coffee, bathroom, IQAir app. For the past two winters, it has been less of a gimmick and more of a warning light. There have been days when the readings shot past 150 micrograms per cubic meter and stayed there, solidly in the ‘harmful for everyone’ range. During a recent two-week stretch, almost every day was like that. The city smelled like burnt dust, and you could feel the air in your throat. My wife and I found ourselves sounding like overprotective parents in a public service announcement: keep the windows closed, do not go for a run, mask up if you can.

International health guidelines make clear what safe air is supposed to look like, and Yerevan has been well outside those limits far too often. This is not about a single bad day or a temporary spike; it has become a pattern and you do not need to be a scientist to understand what prolonged exposure like this means for the lungs, the heart and long-term health. You also do not need to be an activist to recognize that it shortens lives.

When the latest smog spike hit Yerevan this winter, we were not here. We were in Venice, walking through narrow streets and feeling slightly guilty for being able to breathe more easily. Out of habit, I checked the local air data there, as well. Most days, the air pollutants hovered around 15 to 20 micrograms per cubic meter, creeping into ‘moderate’ territory now and then, but rarely into the deep red. In other words, far from perfect, but still in a range that Armenians in Yerevan would happily celebrate. It felt strange to realize that a quick budget flight had taken us, quite literally, into cleaner air.

Back home, friends were writing that they could not see Mount Ararat through the haze; parents were keeping kids indoors; doctors were quietly confirming what the monitors already suggested; even activists were planning a rally outside City Hall to ask, very simply, when this will become a priority, not a talking point.

The official response had been carefully non-alarmist, sometimes bordering on dismissive. For a long time, City Hall brushed off international platforms like IQAir as ‘non-professional,’ suggesting their error margin could be as high as 40 percent. It is true that not all devices are equal, and that some are more reliable than others. But at a certain point, when municipal monitors, ministry data, independent sensors and people’s lungs all point in the same direction, arguing about decimal points starts to feel like a distraction.

Hetq’s reporting shows that even the government’s own laboratory measurements now confirm what residents have long said: Yerevan’s air is laden with dust. In 2024, whole grain dust was below the maximum permissible concentration for only 51 days. During the first three weeks of January 2025, it was above the norm every single day. And that is only dust, not the fine particles, PM2.5 and PM10, that the WHO considers most dangerous and that we are still not measuring properly at the national level.

The sources of this pollution are not mysterious: You can see them, smell them and hear them. Construction tears into the city without real dust control; trucks roar through central streets all day and night; green areas paved over or fenced off for future development; the Nubarashen landfill, smoulders on the city’s edge like a campfire that never goes out; winter heating relies on cheaper, dirtier fuels; backyard leaf burning; old cars with their catalytic converters removed and sold (or stolen). 

What bothers me is not that Yerevan has an air pollution problem; many cities do.

There is something revealing about the ease with which people who are not here, or who only pass through, are ready to declare that there is no real problem, or that it is exaggerated or that it is just ‘seasonal’ and we should stop complaining. It is even more revealing when we start treating calls for cleaner air as coded statements about political loyalty. As if asking not to breathe toxic dust is the same as joining one party or another.

This is where the midlife part comes back. If I accept the rough range of Armenian male life expectancy, I have already used up more than half of my statistically expected healthy years. That is fine. I am not interested in bargaining with fate over a few years on a chart. But I am not willing to pretend that what I breathe in those years does not matter. I did not move to Armenia to shave a decade off my life because we could not be bothered to enforce basic construction rules, regulate vehicle emissions or manage a landfill.

Like many so-called repats, I have the option of leaving. I could, in theory, decide one day that we are done with closing windows, checking maps and buying new air filters, and start somewhere where IQAir isn’t the first app we open in the morning. That option is a form of privilege and I am very aware of it. Most people here do not have that choice. They simply stay and breathe what there is to breathe.

I do not want the air to be what finally drives us away. If we ever leave, I would rather it be for reasons that are harder to fix. Politics will always be messy, borders will always be contested and economies will rise and fall. Those are the big, complex problems that small countries have to live with.

There are already serious people in Armenia working on this: scientists who have been documenting Yerevan’s polluted status since Soviet times, doctors who see the impact on children and adults in their clinics, activists who organize rallies and petitions, journalists who keep returning to the story instead of treating it as a short seasonal curiosity. 

If we care about this place, we cannot keep pretending that winter smog is just another quirk of Yerevan, like chaotic parking or bad customer service. That is a convenient way to avoid answering the actual question, which is quite simple:

I am 37 years old and, by Armenia standards, I have entered midlife, or at least the phase that elsewhere inspires motorcycles, sports cars and hair transplants for those of us who are follically challenged. I would like to spend the second half of it here. I would like to keep walking these streets, writing articles (if anyone is reading) in this office with the windows open, taking our dog out without checking a pollution map first. I would like the children growing up in this city to inherit more than nostalgia and slogans.

If we are serious about Armenia’s future, then at the very least, we have to make sure that the people who stay to build it can breathe long enough to see it.