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 to19 Dec 2024 That day's board

The worst cities for PM2.5 over the 30 days to 19 Dec 2024: Lahore 218.6 µg/m³, Delhi 173.6 µg/m³ and Dhaka 172.8 µg/m³.

  1. 1LahorePakistan218.6
  2. 2DelhiIndia173.6
  3. 3DhakaBangladesh172.8
  4. 4KolkataIndia161.9
  5. 5PeshawarPakistan130.2
  6. 6DushanbeTajikistan106.4
  7. 7KampalaUganda102.8
  8. 8Ulan BatorMongolia97.3
  9. 9IslamabadPakistan93.4
  10. 10N'DjamenaChad87.5
  11. 11Novi PazarSerbia87.1
  12. 12MumbaiIndia79.4
  13. 13TravnikBosnia and Herzegovina78.3
  14. 14KathmanduNepal77.0
  15. 15SarajevoBosnia and Herzegovina72.2
  16. 16Banja LukaBosnia and Herzegovina65.6
  17. 17BaghdadIraq64.6
  18. 18CairoEgypt62.4
  19. 19SalorUzbekistan62.0
  20. 20Santa MaríaPeru60.6

+ 2,556 more cities, 59.8 µg/m³ and below

Not counted on this day, too few days measured: Hyderabad since 19 Dec 2024, Karachi since 8 Dec 2024 and Kinshasa since 29 Nov 2024.

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.