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 18 Jun 2023: Chile 41.0 µg/m³, India 39.5 µg/m³ and Pakistan 38.6 µg/m³.
- 1Chile46 cities41.0
- 2India5 cities39.5
- 3Pakistan4 cities38.6
- 4China3 cities31.0
- 5Mexico11 cities, was 4118.5
- 6Thailand10 cities, was 3717.6
- 7Serbia3 cities12.5
- 8Malta3 cities12.0
- 9Czechia35 cities11.6
- 10Greece7 cities11.6
- 11Belgium41 cities11.5
- 12United States745 cities11.1
- 13Slovakia26 cities10.8
- 14United Kingdom4 cities, was 4310.1
- 15Ireland4 cities10.1
- 16Switzerland9 cities9.9
- 17Germany197 cities9.9
- 18France131 cities9.9
- 19Hungary8 cities9.6
- 20Italy26 cities9.6
+ 11 more countries, 9.2 µg/m³ and below
Not counted on this day, too few cities measured: Romania since 7 Jun 2023, Poland since 29 May 2023, Luxembourg since 27 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.