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 24 Feb 2023: North Macedonia 43.3 µg/m³, Slovenia 36.7 µg/m³ and Bosnia and Herzegovina 29.9 µg/m³.
- 1North Macedonia11 cities43.3
- 2Slovenia8 cities36.7
- 3Bosnia and Herzegovina4 cities29.9
- 4Romania7 cities25.3
- 5Slovakia32 cities20.8
- 6Poland69 cities20.5
- 7Czechia35 cities18.9
- 8Italy29 cities18.7
- 9Greece10 cities18.4
- 10Belgium34 cities18.3
- 11France123 cities17.3
- 12Austria16 cities14.1
- 13Germany167 cities14.0
- 14The Netherlands25 cities14.0
- 15Spain80 cities12.5
- 16Latvia3 cities9.7
- 17Portugal8 cities9.6
- 18Norway17 cities9.3
- 19United States416 cities7.4
- 20Finland13 cities5.6
+ 2 more countries, 4.9 µg/m³ and below
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.