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 14 Aug 2025: Chile 40.7 µg/m³, Pakistan 40.6 µg/m³ and Peru 27.2 µg/m³.
- 1Chile48 cities40.7
- 2Pakistan11 cities40.6
- 3Peru4 cities27.2
- 4India226 cities22.3
- 5Philippines3 cities21.5
- 6Ghana4 cities20.8
- 7Italy28 cities19.3
- 8Bosnia and Herzegovina4 cities17.0
- 9Switzerland11 cities15.6
- 10Mexico37 cities14.9
- 11Spain112 cities14.4
- 12Slovakia40 cities13.4
- 13Malta5 cities13.0
- 14Czechia32 cities12.7
- 15Slovenia12 cities12.5
- 16Belgium50 cities11.5
- 17Austria36 cities11.4
- 18The Netherlands36 cities11.4
- 19Germany251 cities11.0
- 20France8 cities, was 10411.0
+ 25 more countries, 10.8 µg/m³ and below
- 35United States844 cities7.6
Not counted on this day, too few cities measured: Martinique since 9 Aug 2025, China since 7 Aug 2025, Serbia since 3 Jul 2025 and 2 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.