SmogRank / History / City race

Cities, worst air first, day by day

Each measured city's average over the 30 days to every day since January 2023, worst first. Find your own city to follow it through the race, or keep to one country.

The 7 days to28 Sep 2023 That day's board

The worst cities for PM2.5 over the 7 days to 28 Sep 2023: Peshawar 60.4 µg/m³, Lahore 56.0 µg/m³ and Delhi 51.3 µg/m³.

  1. 1PeshawarPakistan60.4
  2. 2LahorePakistan56.0
  3. 3DelhiIndia51.3
  4. 4DhakaBangladesh47.7
  5. 5CoyhaiqueChile47.2
  6. 6OsornoChile44.5
  7. 7Puerto VarasChile44.4
  8. 8YrekaUnited States42.8
  9. 9Şabāḩ as SālimKuwait42.7
  10. 10La UniónChile39.5
  11. 11KampalaUganda39.2
  12. 12JakartaIndonesia38.8
  13. 13NacimientoChile35.7
  14. 14Addis AbabaEthiopia35.3
  15. 15Ash ShīḩānīyahQatar34.3
  16. 16Fort St. JohnCanada33.6
  17. 17ŻabbarMalta33.5
  18. 18Puerto MonttChile33.2
  19. 19Santa Anita - Los FicusPeru31.9
  20. 20BeijingChina31.4

+ 2,241 more cities, the next at 31.3 µg/m³

Not counted on this day, too few days measured: Dushanbe since 24 Sep 2023, Alexandria since 19 Sep 2023, Kigali since 17 Sep 2023 and 2 more cities.

GoodModerateUnhealthy for sensitive groupsUnhealthyVery unhealthyHazardousWHO 24-hour guideline, 15 µg/m³Fades where it stood: not counted that day

A city's number is its average over the 30 days, shown only when 21 of them were measured (5 of 7 on the 7-day race), the same minimum as the 30- and 7-day boards. A city whose monitors go quiet fades out where it stood rather than sliding down, so a gap never reads as cleaner air. 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.