This Gorgeous City Has the Cleanest Air in the U.S. and Europe, According to a New Report

If you're looking for a true breath of fresh air in the most literal sense, the pros at QR Code Generator have a new study you're going to want to see. In September, the team unveiled the findings of its newest study, which showed which U.S. and European destinations have the lowest pollution rates, offering the cleanest air possible for travelers and locals alike.

To assess each city's air quality, the team began by creating a list of all the cities in the U.S. and Europe. Next, the team input the list into the Google Keyword Planner and combined each city with travel-related terms, including city "break," "holiday," and "vacation rental," to find which were the most searched for between July 2023 and June 2024. After narrowing down the list to the most searched, it then found the air quality scores for the top cities using iqair.com .

It then ranked the cities based on air quality, noting "the better the air quality, the lower the score. Therefore, a ranking was created based on which cities with over 10,000 average monthly searches had the lowest air quality scores."

After looking at all the data, it named Reykjavik, Iceland's capital, the top city for air quality.

"Reykjavik takes the top spot, with an air quality score of six. Iceland's largest city and capital received 10,913 average monthly searches for city breaks, as it offers a wide range of tourist activities while maintaining low pollution levels," the team noted in the findings.

It was followed by another northern city, Anchorage Alaska, which came in second thanks to its high search volume (19,563 average month searches) and healthy air quality. These two were joined by Oslo, Norway, in third, along with New Castle, United Kingdom; Inverness, Glasgow and Edinburgh; Scotland; Colorado Springs, Colorado; Newark, New Jersey; Tromsø, Norway; West Palm Beach, Florida; Stockholm, Sweden; Reno, Nevada and Helsinki, Finland in the top spots.