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.

CountriesCities
The 30 days to28 Jan 2024 That day's board

The worst cities for PM2.5 over the 30 days to 28 Jan 2024: Peshawar 309.5 µg/m³, Lahore 257.1 µg/m³ and Delhi 244.9 µg/m³.

  1. 1PeshawarPakistan309.5
  2. 2LahorePakistan257.1
  3. 3DelhiIndia244.9
  4. 4DhakaBangladesh202.8
  5. 5KolkataIndia189.9
  6. 6IslamabadPakistan183.1
  7. 7Ulan BatorMongolia131.1
  8. 8AbujaNigeria115.2
  9. 9KarachiPakistan103.3
  10. 10MumbaiIndia79.9
  11. 11PljevljaMontenegro79.8
  12. 12CairoEgypt77.2
  13. 13HyderabadIndia76.4
  14. 14SarajevoBosnia and Herzegovina76.4
  15. 15SalorUzbekistan75.8
  16. 16Banja LukaBosnia and Herzegovina73.6
  17. 17TetovoNorth Macedonia70.0
  18. 18KathmanduNepal69.3
  19. 19KampalaUganda67.5
  20. 20KavadarciNorth Macedonia61.7

+ 2,420 more cities, 61.5 µg/m³ and below

Not counted on this day, too few days measured: Ciudad Benito Juárez since 25 Jan 2024, Tlaquepaque since 17 Jan 2024, Lagos since 11 Jan 2024 and 3 more cities.

30 days7 days
GoodModerateSensitive 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 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.