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 7 days to 19 Jul 2024: Chile 58.5 µg/m³, Pakistan 36.8 µg/m³ and China 26.5 µg/m³.
- 1Chile44 cities58.5
- 2Pakistan4 cities36.8
- 3China3 cities26.5
- 4Peru15 cities23.7
- 5Serbia22 cities16.9
- 6North Macedonia9 cities16.8
- 7Malta4 cities16.5
- 8New Zealand5 cities16.1
- 9Singapore5 cities16.1
- 10Romania8 cities14.1
- 11Slovakia41 cities13.9
- 12Italy11 cities12.8
- 13Hungary10 cities12.7
- 14Greece7 cities11.8
- 15India4 cities11.4
- 16Mexico4 cities10.5
- 17Bulgaria8 cities10.4
- 18Slovenia12 cities10.4
- 19Thailand65 cities, was 7910.2
- 20South Korea140 cities9.3
+ 24 more countries, 8.7 µg/m³ and below
- 25United States797 cities8.3
Not counted on this day, too few cities measured: Spain since 18 Jul 2024, Bosnia and Herzegovina since 14 Jul 2024, Kosovo since 14 Jul 2024 and 3 more countries.
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.