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 Jul 2026: Chile 59.6 µg/m³, Pakistan 37.4 µg/m³ and Malawi 27.8 µg/m³.
- 1Chile45 cities59.6
- 2Pakistan14 cities37.4
- 3Malawi5 cities27.8
- 4Peru6 cities27.5
- 5Lebanon3 cities20.9
- 6India201 cities, was 22319.4
- 7Martinique3 cities14.9
- 8Kazakhstan4 cities13.3
- 9Mexico47 cities13.3
- 10South Korea116 cities10.2
- 11Malta5 cities10.1
- 12Brazil6 cities9.5
- 13Spain35 cities9.5
- 14New Zealand6 cities9.0
- 15Serbia8 cities8.9
- 16Greece8 cities8.7
- 17Italy30 cities8.6
- 18North Macedonia11 cities, was 148.5
- 19United States844 cities8.4
- 20Senegal4 cities8.2
+ 25 more countries, 7.9 µg/m³ and below
Not counted on this day, too few cities measured: Lithuania since 9 Jul 2026, Latvia since 4 Jul 2026, Norway since 4 Jul 2026 and 6 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.