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 12 Jun 2026: Chile 44.6 µg/m³, Pakistan 33.1 µg/m³ and India 29.3 µg/m³.
- 1Chile46 cities44.6
- 2Pakistan12 cities33.1
- 3India224 cities29.3
- 4Malawi5 cities26.8
- 5Brazil6 cities22.3
- 6Peru6 cities22.2
- 7Lebanon3 cities21.9
- 8New Zealand6 cities15.3
- 9Senegal4 cities12.9
- 10South Korea135 cities12.6
- 11Kazakhstan4 cities11.4
- 12Mexico49 cities10.2
- 13Thailand78 cities9.6
- 14Hungary4 cities, was 137.5
- 15Japan564 cities7.0
- 16United States823 cities6.5
- 17Taiwan44 cities5.9
- 18Australia37 cities4.4
- 19Bulgaria7 cities4.4
- 20Canada113 cities4.4
+ 3 more countries, 3.6 µg/m³ and below
Not counted on this day, too few cities measured: Austria since 10 Jun 2026, Bosnia and Herzegovina since 10 Jun 2026, Switzerland since 10 Jun 2026 and 27 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.