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 8 Sep 2026: Malawi 70.4 µg/m³, Pakistan 35.6 µg/m³ and Indonesia 30.8 µg/m³.
- 1Malawi5 cities70.4
- 2Pakistan16 cities35.6
- 3Indonesia4 cities30.8
- 4Nigeria3 cities27.9
- 5Nepal3 cities27.8
- 6Chile47 cities26.1
- 7India229 cities, was 21222.3
- 8Lebanon3 cities21.9
- 9Kyrgyzstan3 cities19.1
- 10South Africa38 cities18.0
- 11Kazakhstan5 cities15.4
- 12Mexico49 cities14.8
- 13Ghana5 cities14.5
- 14Philippines3 cities13.9
- 15Montenegro5 cities13.7
- 16Hong Kong12 cities13.4
- 17Thailand75 cities11.9
- 18Bosnia and Herzegovina5 cities11.4
- 19Italy29 cities11.3
- 20Senegal4 cities11.0
+ 31 more countries, 10.9 µg/m³ and below
- 35United States898 cities5.5
Not counted on this day, too few cities measured: Sweden since 4 Sep 2026, Latvia since 3 Sep 2026, Martinique since 2 Sep 2026 and 2 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.