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 Jul 2026: Chile 57.8 µg/m³, Pakistan 37.6 µg/m³ and Peru 28.4 µg/m³.
- 1Chile45 cities57.8
- 2Pakistan14 cities37.6
- 3Peru6 cities28.4
- 4Malawi5 cities27.0
- 5Lebanon3 cities21.1
- 6India205 cities, was 22319.1
- 7Kazakhstan4 cities15.0
- 8Martinique3 cities14.3
- 9Mexico46 cities13.6
- 10New Zealand6 cities11.8
- 11South Korea116 cities10.9
- 12Malta5 cities10.8
- 13Greece10 cities10.7
- 14Brazil6 cities10.1
- 15Serbia8 cities9.6
- 16North Macedonia11 cities, was 149.3
- 17United States843 cities9.0
- 18Spain22 cities8.5
- 19Romania26 cities, was 278.5
- 20Senegal4 cities8.5
+ 26 more countries, 8.2 µg/m³ and below
Not counted on this day, too few cities measured: Latvia since 4 Jul 2026, Norway since 4 Jul 2026, Thailand since 4 Jul 2026 and 5 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.