SmogRank / History / City race

Cities, worst air first, day by day

Each measured city's average over the 30 days to every day since January 2023, worst first. Find your own city to follow it through the race, or keep to one country.

CountriesCities
The 7 days to22 Aug 2026 That day's board

The worst cities for PM2.5 over the 7 days to 22 Aug 2026: Vanderbijlpark 122.4 µg/m³, Bawāna 104.4 µg/m³ and Coyhaique 104.0 µg/m³.

  1. 1VanderbijlparkSouth Africa122.4
  2. 2BawānaIndia104.4
  3. 3CoyhaiqueChile104.0
  4. 4EtwatwaSouth Africa100.8
  5. 5SasarāmIndia85.1
  6. 6KinshasaDemocratic Republic of the Congo84.2
  7. 7Charkhi DādriIndia78.9
  8. 8PalembangIndonesia75.1
  9. 9OsornoChile67.3
  10. 10LinaresChile65.4
  11. 11NacimientoChile65.1
  12. 12HualpénChile64.1
  13. 13KampalaUganda63.7
  14. 14GummidipundiIndia62.7
  15. 15SamāstipurIndia61.8
  16. 16PanipatIndia60.2
  17. 17DispurIndia59.9
  18. 18MānesarIndia59.9
  19. 19PāliIndia58.8
  20. 20VereenigingSouth Africa57.6

+ 3,085 more cities, 56.8 µg/m³ and below

Not counted on this day, too few days measured: Benoni since 22 Aug 2026, Rājgīr since 31 Jul 2026 and Santa María since 10 Jul 2026.

30 days7 days
GoodModerateSensitive groupsUnhealthyVery unhealthyHazardousWHO 24-hour guideline, 15 µg/m³Fades where it stood: not counted that day

A city's number is its average over the 30 days, shown only when 21 of them were measured (5 of 7 on the 7-day race), the same minimum as the 30- and 7-day boards. A city whose monitors go quiet fades out where it stood rather than sliding down, so a gap never reads as cleaner air. 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.