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 16 Jul 2026: Malawi 47.5 µg/m³, Chile 37.8 µg/m³ and Ghana 30.8 µg/m³.
- 1Malawi5 cities47.5
- 2Chile45 cities37.8
- 3Ghana3 cities30.8
- 4Pakistan13 cities30.4
- 5India223 cities, was 22327.0
- 6Lebanon3 cities19.3
- 7Philippines3 cities16.9
- 8New Zealand6 cities16.3
- 9Kazakhstan4 cities14.8
- 10Martinique3 cities14.5
- 11Mexico48 cities14.0
- 12Brazil6 cities12.5
- 13Italy32 cities12.0
- 14South Korea133 cities11.7
- 15Malta5 cities11.6
- 16Japan562 cities11.4
- 17Serbia8 cities10.9
- 18Bosnia and Herzegovina6 cities10.8
- 19France113 cities10.6
- 20United Kingdom6 cities10.4
+ 26 more countries, 10.2 µg/m³ and below
- 26United States874 cities9.0
Not counted on this day, too few cities measured: The Netherlands since 15 Jul 2026, Greece since 11 Jul 2026, Lithuania since 11 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.