Donate

← Maps

Pollution

Fine particle air pollution (PM2.5)

Outdoor fine particles that damage lungs and hearts, from satellites, models, and monitors, not a smell test.

Our World in Data choropleth of outdoor PM2.5: pale countries with a dark brown band across North Africa, the Middle East, and South and East Asia
World Health Organization; Our World in Data; NASA Earth observations. 2019-2022.
Pollution 2019-2022 WHO / OWID

WHO publishes air-quality guidelines and a database of exposures. Our World in Data maps population-weighted PM2.5. NASA instruments (MODIS, VIIRS, and related missions) observe aerosols that help build those estimates. This card points to those public layers.

Source

World Health Organization; Our World in Data; NASA Earth observations
Vintage: 2019-2022
https://www.who.int/data/gho/data/themes/air-pollution

License

NASA imagery is public domain. We host a cropped Our World in Data map export (CC BY) of population-weighted PM2.5. Open the OWID air-pollution map for the interactive layer.

How to read it

Darker or higher values usually mean more annual average PM2.5. Cities can be far worse than a country mean. Indoor smoke and ozone are separate problems. WHO’s guideline (5 µg/m³ annual PM2.5) is a health benchmark, not a legal limit everywhere.

Caveats

Satellite-model blends smooth local peaks. Ground monitors are uneven. Dust storms and fire seasons spike short periods. This page does not rank countries.

Open source map →