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 30 days to 23 Feb 2023: Romania 22.2 µg/m³, Greece 21.2 µg/m³ and Slovakia 21.1 µg/m³.
- 1Romania4 cities22.2
- 2Greece8 cities21.2
- 3Slovakia19 cities21.1
- 4Italy12 cities20.4
- 5Poland60 cities20.2
- 6Belgium24 cities19.7
- 7France94 cities17.6
- 8Czechia25 cities17.1
- 9The Netherlands22 cities14.8
- 10Germany146 cities14.3
- 11Austria12 cities14.2
- 12Spain70 cities12.9
- 13Portugal6 cities10.8
- 14Norway17 cities9.5
- 15United States376 cities7.5
- 16Sweden6 cities5.6
- 17Finland8 cities5.1
- 18Reunion3 cities4.9
Not counted on this day, too few cities measured: Bulgaria since 6 Feb 2023, United Kingdom since 6 Feb 2023, Brazil since 5 Feb 2023 and 12 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.