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 Nov 2024: Pakistan 111.8 µg/m³, India 86.6 µg/m³ and Bosnia and Herzegovina 49.3 µg/m³.
- 1Pakistan4 cities111.8
- 2India5 cities86.6
- 3Bosnia and Herzegovina3 cities49.3
- 4Serbia25 cities43.8
- 5Thailand16 cities25.6
- 6Romania10 cities25.4
- 7China3 cities24.8
- 8Hungary10 cities23.0
- 9Poland77 cities21.8
- 10Slovakia40 cities20.8
- 11Chile46 cities18.9
- 12Czechia36 cities18.6
- 13Hong Kong13 cities18.2
- 14Peru15 cities17.7
- 15Mexico12 cities, was 316.7
- 16Bulgaria8 cities15.6
- 17South Korea141 cities15.2
- 18Singapore5 cities14.7
- 19United Kingdom5 cities, was 6312.5
- 20Belgium45 cities12.1
+ 21 more countries, 10.8 µg/m³ and below
- 34United States820 cities6.3
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.