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 15 Aug 2025: Pakistan 41.9 µg/m³, Chile 37.9 µg/m³ and Peru 26.8 µg/m³.
- 1Pakistan11 cities41.9
- 2Chile48 cities37.9
- 3Peru4 cities26.8
- 4India224 cities21.5
- 5Italy28 cities19.7
- 6Philippines3 cities19.5
- 7Ghana4 cities18.7
- 8Bosnia and Herzegovina4 cities16.9
- 9Switzerland11 cities16.5
- 10Spain112 cities15.1
- 11Czechia34 cities14.2
- 12Mexico37 cities14.2
- 13Malta5 cities14.1
- 14Slovakia40 cities13.8
- 15Slovenia12 cities13.7
- 16Germany235 cities12.5
- 17France20 cities, was 10412.3
- 18Luxembourg3 cities12.2
- 19Austria36 cities11.9
- 20The Netherlands36 cities11.8
+ 25 more countries, 11.4 µg/m³ and below
- 34United States852 cities7.7
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.