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 18 Feb 2024: Pakistan 132.8 µg/m³, India 77.1 µg/m³ and China 50.4 µg/m³.
- 1Pakistan4 cities132.8
- 2India5 cities77.1
- 3China3 cities50.4
- 4North Macedonia9 cities49.3
- 5Serbia16 cities, was 340.4
- 6Montenegro3 cities39.1
- 7Thailand73 cities, was 939.0
- 8Italy23 cities22.5
- 9Peru6 cities20.1
- 10Romania8 cities20.0
- 11Chile45 cities19.1
- 12Hong Kong13 cities19.1
- 13Bulgaria6 cities17.8
- 14Slovakia36 cities16.5
- 15Greece10 cities15.9
- 16Hungary9 cities15.6
- 17Poland78 cities15.5
- 18Czechia37 cities14.0
- 19South Africa9 cities14.0
- 20Spain111 cities12.5
+ 20 more countries, 12.5 µg/m³ and below
- 37United States779 cities6.7
Not counted on this day, too few cities measured: Iceland since 15 Feb 2024, Reunion since 20 Jan 2024 and Malta since 6 Jan 2024. Days missing from the source archive fall in this window, so fewer countries are counted.
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.