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 Aug 2026: Malawi 49.8 µg/m³, Pakistan 32.8 µg/m³ and Chile 30.4 µg/m³.
- 1Malawi5 cities49.8
- 2Pakistan14 cities32.8
- 3Chile47 cities30.4
- 4Lebanon3 cities26.4
- 5Nepal3 cities22.6
- 6India200 cities21.0
- 7Mexico37 cities16.0
- 8Hong Kong12 cities15.4
- 9Brazil6 cities14.9
- 10Martinique3 cities14.7
- 11Italy31 cities14.6
- 12New Zealand6 cities14.3
- 13Bosnia and Herzegovina5 cities14.1
- 14Slovakia38 cities14.1
- 15Kazakhstan4 cities13.9
- 16Serbia8 cities12.9
- 17Montenegro4 cities12.7
- 18Romania22 cities, was 712.4
- 19North Macedonia14 cities12.1
- 20Greece12 cities11.8
+ 28 more countries, 11.7 µg/m³ and below
- 26United States856 cities9.1
Not counted on this day, too few cities measured: Malta since 7 Aug 2026, Luxembourg since 6 Aug 2026, Ghana since 20 Jul 2026 and 3 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.