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 10 Jul 2026: Chile 58.3 µg/m³, Pakistan 38.3 µg/m³ and Malawi 28.4 µg/m³.
- 1Chile45 cities58.3
- 2Pakistan13 cities38.3
- 3Malawi5 cities28.4
- 4India202 cities, was 22320.6
- 5Lebanon3 cities20.4
- 6Martinique3 cities15.1
- 7Kazakhstan4 cities13.8
- 8Mexico48 cities12.8
- 9Spain37 cities11.1
- 10Malta5 cities9.9
- 11Greece7 cities9.8
- 12South Korea124 cities9.7
- 13Senegal4 cities8.7
- 14Italy30 cities8.6
- 15Serbia8 cities8.1
- 16United States847 cities8.0
- 17Bosnia and Herzegovina6 cities7.9
- 18Japan562 cities7.7
- 19North Macedonia12 cities, was 147.5
- 20Brazil6 cities7.4
+ 26 more countries, 7.3 µg/m³ and below
Not counted on this day, too few cities measured: Peru since 10 Jul 2026, Latvia since 4 Jul 2026, Norway 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.