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 8 Jun 2026: Chile 47.7 µg/m³, Pakistan 33.4 µg/m³ and India 28.8 µg/m³.
- 1Chile46 cities47.7
- 2Pakistan13 cities33.4
- 3India225 cities28.8
- 4Malawi5 cities25.0
- 5Peru6 cities24.2
- 6Lebanon3 cities15.2
- 7Senegal4 cities13.9
- 8South Korea135 cities13.7
- 9Brazil6 cities13.4
- 10Mexico45 cities12.9
- 11Malta4 cities12.7
- 12Thailand78 cities11.4
- 13Greece15 cities10.4
- 14Taiwan44 cities9.8
- 15Kazakhstan4 cities9.7
- 16New Zealand6 cities9.7
- 17Serbia8 cities9.5
- 18Italy34 cities8.6
- 19Romania24 cities8.1
- 20Hungary4 cities, was 137.5
+ 20 more countries, 7.3 µg/m³ and below
- 23United States835 cities7.0
Not counted on this day, too few cities measured: Belgium since 8 Jun 2026, Estonia since 8 Jun 2026, France since 8 Jun 2026 and 10 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.