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 22 Jun 2023: Chile 43.7 µg/m³, Pakistan 39.9 µg/m³ and India 36.3 µg/m³.
- 1Chile46 cities43.7
- 2Pakistan4 cities39.9
- 3India5 cities36.3
- 4China3 cities26.0
- 5Mexico11 cities18.9
- 6Thailand10 cities15.8
- 7Serbia3 cities12.7
- 8Malta4 cities12.3
- 9Czechia36 cities11.6
- 10Slovakia26 cities11.4
- 11Greece8 cities11.3
- 12Belgium41 cities10.9
- 13United States748 cities10.6
- 14Switzerland9 cities10.2
- 15Hungary8 cities10.0
- 16Italy28 cities10.0
- 17Lithuania4 cities9.9
- 18Germany196 cities9.7
- 19United Kingdom4 cities9.7
- 20France131 cities9.5
+ 11 more countries, 9.4 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.