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 9 Jun 2026: Chile 46.9 µg/m³, Pakistan 32.0 µg/m³ and India 29.8 µg/m³.
- 1Chile46 cities46.9
- 2Pakistan12 cities32.0
- 3India224 cities29.8
- 4Malawi5 cities26.2
- 5Peru6 cities24.9
- 6Lebanon3 cities16.6
- 7Brazil6 cities16.4
- 8Senegal4 cities14.0
- 9South Korea134 cities12.8
- 10Mexico44 cities12.8
- 11New Zealand6 cities11.0
- 12Thailand78 cities10.6
- 13Kazakhstan4 cities10.4
- 14Serbia8 cities9.7
- 15Romania23 cities8.6
- 16Finland13 cities7.7
- 17Hungary4 cities, was 137.6
- 18Taiwan44 cities7.3
- 19Bosnia and Herzegovina4 cities7.1
- 20United States832 cities7.0
+ 18 more countries, 6.6 µg/m³ and below
Not counted on this day, too few cities measured: Greece since 9 Jun 2026, Malta since 9 Jun 2026, Belgium since 8 Jun 2026 and 12 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.