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 11 Jul 2026: Chile 54.7 µg/m³, Pakistan 37.6 µg/m³ and Malawi 29.5 µg/m³.
- 1Chile46 cities54.7
- 2Pakistan13 cities37.6
- 3Malawi5 cities29.5
- 4India204 cities, was 22321.7
- 5Lebanon3 cities19.6
- 6Martinique3 cities13.9
- 7Kazakhstan4 cities13.3
- 8Mexico48 cities12.8
- 9Spain26 cities12.5
- 10Brazil6 cities11.1
- 11Malta5 cities10.0
- 12Italy31 cities9.4
- 13South Korea130 cities9.1
- 14Senegal4 cities9.1
- 15Serbia8 cities8.5
- 16Bosnia and Herzegovina6 cities8.0
- 17United States856 cities7.7
- 18Montenegro5 cities7.6
- 19Japan562 cities7.3
- 20Romania25 cities, was 277.3
+ 24 more countries, 7.2 µg/m³ and below
Not counted on this day, too few cities measured: Greece since 11 Jul 2026, Lithuania since 11 Jul 2026, Peru since 10 Jul 2026 and 7 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.