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.

CountriesCities
The 7 days to2 Mar 2023 That day's board

The worst countries for PM2.5 over the 7 days to 2 Mar 2023: North Macedonia 30.4 µg/m³, Poland 24.6 µg/m³ and Greece 21.7 µg/m³.

  1. 1North Macedonia11 cities30.4
  2. 2Poland70 cities24.6
  3. 3Greece10 cities21.7
  4. 4Romania7 cities20.6
  5. 5Kosovo6 cities19.5
  6. 6Bosnia and Herzegovina4 cities18.8
  7. 7Slovenia8 cities18.4
  8. 8Czechia36 cities18.3
  9. 9Slovakia33 cities16.3
  10. 10Austria17 cities14.7
  11. 11Italy36 cities, was 914.2
  12. 12France128 cities13.6
  13. 13Belgium35 cities10.2
  14. 14Latvia4 cities10.2
  15. 15Germany173 cities9.8
  16. 16The Netherlands26 cities8.6
  17. 17Brazil17 cities7.8
  18. 18Lithuania3 cities7.8
  19. 19Norway16 cities7.8
  20. 20Portugal7 cities7.7

+ 6 more countries, the next at 7.7 µg/m³

  1. 21United States426 cities7.7

Not counted on this day, too few cities measured: Croatia since 28 Feb 2023, Bulgaria since 4 Feb 2023, Canada since 4 Feb 2023 and 18 more countries. Days missing from the source archive fall in this window, so fewer countries are counted.

30 days7 days
GoodModerateUnhealthy for sensitive groupsUnhealthyVery unhealthyHazardousWHO 24-hour guideline, 15 µg/m³Fades where it stood: not counted that 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, Turkey and Iran, which publish only on their own websites. We are building the reader for China's network. The networks of Turkey and Iran don't answer requests from outside their countries, so we can't read them. Most cities there are missing from this board, not clean. Why.