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 23 Dec 2023: Pakistan 121.0 µg/m³, India 107.0 µg/m³ and North Macedonia 41.6 µg/m³.
- 1Pakistan4 cities121.0
- 2India4 cities107.0
- 3North Macedonia7 cities41.6
- 4China3 cities38.6
- 5Serbia3 cities32.1
- 6Thailand9 cities30.8
- 7Hong Kong13 cities20.7
- 8Bulgaria5 cities20.4
- 9Slovakia27 cities19.7
- 10Mexico45 cities, was 1119.0
- 11Czechia33 cities18.9
- 12Romania8 cities18.8
- 13Chile40 cities17.5
- 14Hungary7 cities17.2
- 15Italy23 cities16.5
- 16Greece9 cities15.8
- 17Austria29 cities13.3
- 18Lithuania3 cities13.3
- 19Belgium41 cities10.4
- 20France134 cities9.8
+ 16 more countries, 9.7 µg/m³ and below
- 28United States758 cities7.7
Not counted on this day, too few cities measured: Martinique since 8 Dec 2023.
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.