SmogRank / History / Country race
Countries, worst air first, day by day
Each country's typical measured city over the 30 days to every day since January 2023, worst first. Press Play to watch the order change, or drag the slider to any day.
The worst countries for PM2.5 over the 7 days to 18 Feb 2023: North Macedonia 62.9 µg/m³, Romania 43.4 µg/m³ and Slovenia 42.6 µg/m³.
- 1North Macedonia11 cities62.9
- 2Romania7 cities43.4
- 3Slovenia8 cities42.6
- 4Bosnia and Herzegovina4 cities35.3
- 5Slovakia33 cities26.2
- 6Greece10 cities25.4
- 7Italy33 cities, was 923.9
- 8Belgium35 cities23.2
- 9Croatia3 cities22.9
- 10Poland68 cities22.6
- 11France129 cities21.4
- 12Czechia36 cities19.8
- 13The Netherlands26 cities19.5
- 14Austria17 cities16.6
- 15Germany169 cities14.7
- 16Spain92 cities13.6
- 17Norway17 cities11.9
- 18Latvia4 cities9.9
- 19Portugal8 cities9.8
- 20United States419 cities6.8
+ 3 more countries, 5.5 µg/m³ and below
Not counted on this day, too few cities measured: Lithuania since 18 Feb 2023, Kosovo since 5 Feb 2023, Australia since 4 Feb 2023 and 21 more countries. Days missing from the source archive fall in this window, so fewer countries are counted.
Countries counted each day
A country's number is its typical measured city: the median of its cities' means over the 30 days (a city needs 21 of them measured; 5 of 7 on the 7-day race), shown only with 3 such cities. A country whose monitors go quiet fades out where it stood rather than sliding down, so a gap never reads as cleaner air; "was" beside a city count marks a month after many cities joined or left. Some large countries are thin or missing because their monitors' licences don't allow reuse. How we rank.
Not covered: the government monitoring networks of China and Turkey, which publish only on their own websites; we are building the readers for them. Most cities there are missing from this board, not clean. Why.