Air pollution is one of the leading causes of death around the world. Therefore, you may be curious: where is the cleanest air in the world? And what city has the best air quality? Smart Air analyzed 2024 air pollution data from 493 major cities around the world to create the ranking of the “25 Cities with the Best Air Quality” to help you find the cities with the cleanest, safest air in the world.
Rankings: 25 Cities with the Best Air Quality
1. Zürich, Switzerland (0.7 µg/m3)
2. Perth, Australia (1.4 µg/m3)
3. Vitória, Brazil (2.2 µg/m3)
4. Hobart, Australia (2.4 µg/m3)
5. Launceston, Australia (3.6 µg/m3)
6. Halifax, Canada (3.8 µg/m3)
7. Vancouver, Canada (3.8 µg/m3)
8. Saint-Denis, Réunion (3.8 µg/m3)
9. Surrey, Canada (4.0 µg/m3)
10. Tampere, Finland (4.0 µg/m3)
11. Turku, Finland (4.0 µg/m3)
12. Reykjavík, Iceland (4.0 µg/m3)
13. Tallinn, Estonia (4.3 µg/m3)
14. Salamanca, Spain (4.3 µg/m3)
15. Uppsala, Sweden (4.3 µg/m3)
16. Honolulu, United States (4.3 µg/m3)
17. Providence, United States (4.3 µg/m3)
18. Bergen, Norway (4.5 µg/m3)
19. Trondheim, Norway (4.5 µg/m3)
20. Funchal, Portugal (4.5 µg/m3)
21. Albuquerque, United States (4.5 µg/m3)
22. Portland, United States (4.5 µg/m3)
23. Salem, United States (4.5 µg/m3)
24. Wollongong, Australia (4.8 µg/m3)
25. Edinburgh, United Kingdom (4.8 µg/m3)
Read More: The 25 Most Polluted Cities of 2024?
What is the Least Polluted City in the World?
Australia topped the list as the least polluted country in the world, with 3 cities in the top 5. Of the 25 least polluted cities in the world with the best air quality, Australia, Canada, and the United States dominated the rankings with some of the cleanest air in the world in 2024.
Zürich, Switzerland, once again ranked as the least polluted city in the world. Australia and the United States were the only countries having at least 4 cities ranking in the top 25 least polluted cities in the world, followed closely by Canada with 3 cities.
WATCH: Top 5 Least Polluted Cities in 2022
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How Air Pollution Was Measured to Find Cities with the Cleanest Air in the World
The above rankings of the 2024 least polluted cities in the world were ranked based on their average PM2.5 pollution levels from the 12 months before the publication date.
These small pollutants have a width of fewer than 2.5 µg and are considered to be one of the more dangerous pollutants due to their ability to enter deep into the lungs and bloodstream.
Open Data
The PM2.5 AQI 2024 world pollution data used for the rankings of the world’s worst polluted cities are openly available at https://aqicn.org/data-platform/covid19/.
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This is untrue. I live in Switzerland and the air is poor. Much worse than the eastern seaboard of the USA or many parts of England. One thing the Swiss government does is that they do not include pm2.5 measurements and they stop measuring altogether on some days.
could you explain why India isn’t on the list ?
For the last two decades I have been living all over Sydney. Some places are very clean – gated communities where there is round-the-clock upkeep using vacuum machinery that don’t blow the air around. But the rest of the city can be very dusty. Less busy areas of the state might be wonderfully pristine but cities that are crowded with vehicles are a different story. To add to the already serious vehicular pollution, we have the notorious dust storm every now and again when the red dust from the desert center blows across a vast region, clothing entire states in… Read more »
You fail to mention Wellington, New Zealand. Possibly the cleanest air on Earth
For Salamanca, Estonia, you should have Salamanca, Spain.