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 20 Jan 2024: Pakistan 229.1 µg/m³, India 92.1 µg/m³ and North Macedonia 59.7 µg/m³.
- 1Pakistan4 cities229.1
- 2India5 cities92.1
- 3North Macedonia7 cities59.7
- 4China3 cities46.1
- 5Thailand9 cities42.4
- 6Serbia3 cities36.9
- 7Hong Kong13 cities25.2
- 8Romania7 cities24.1
- 9Greece10 cities21.9
- 10Mexico37 cities21.3
- 11Bulgaria5 cities20.2
- 12Italy24 cities18.3
- 13Chile44 cities17.5
- 14Czechia31 cities17.5
- 15Hungary9 cities17.4
- 16Slovakia27 cities15.9
- 17Austria28 cities13.3
- 18France129 cities12.9
- 19Switzerland9 cities10.7
- 20Germany205 cities10.0
+ 14 more countries, 9.7 µg/m³ and below
- 28United States767 cities7.1
Not counted on this day, too few cities measured: Reunion since 20 Jan 2024, Malta since 6 Jan 2024 and 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.