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 2 Jun 2023: Chile 37.2 µg/m³, India 37.0 µg/m³ and Pakistan 35.5 µg/m³.
- 1Chile44 cities37.2
- 2India5 cities37.0
- 3Pakistan4 cities35.5
- 4Mexico12 cities, was 4122.3
- 5Thailand10 cities, was 3721.6
- 6Serbia3 cities13.4
- 7Greece7 cities11.8
- 8Belgium41 cities11.5
- 9Czechia35 cities11.1
- 10Slovakia26 cities10.9
- 11Malta3 cities10.5
- 12Hungary8 cities9.6
- 13Romania6 cities9.3
- 14Bulgaria6 cities9.1
- 15Singapore5 cities8.9
- 16Austria30 cities8.8
- 17Germany196 cities8.8
- 18Italy28 cities8.7
- 19United States740 cities8.4
- 20Spain97 cities8.2
+ 9 more countries, 8.1 µg/m³ and below
Not counted on this day, too few cities measured: Poland since 29 May 2023, Luxembourg since 27 May 2023, The Netherlands since 23 May 2023 and 6 more countries.
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.