It has earned a reputation for its trash-strewn, rat-infested sidewalks, but New York is not the dirtiest city in America, according to a new study.
Research published by LawnStarter ranked the dirtiest metropolitan areas in the country, taking into account factors like air quality, infrastructure problems, and the number of pests running through people’s homes.
Their findings showed that Houston, Texas, is now the dirtiest city in the United States after surpassing Newark, New Jersey, last year.
Newark, which is across the Hudson River from New York City, is still in second place.
And although the Big Apple didn’t get the number one spot, it did get the 12th spot.
Houston overtook Newark as the dirtiest city in 2023, largely due to pollution issues and cockroach infestations.
Of the 152 cities analyzed, Houston was the third most polluted overall and had the third worst greenhouse gas emissions from large industrial facilities.
The city of 2.3 million also has the biggest cockroach problem, according to data LawnStarter’sister site pest gnome taken from the Census Bureau.
Southern states in general appear to have many more cockroach-infested homes, as San Antonio, Texas, and Tampa, Florida, rounded out the top three.
And Americans terrified of mice or rats should stay away from Boston, Philadelphia or Baltimore, which were the top three cities where the rodents populated their homes.
California also had a series of poor results on the list despite its billions of dollars spent cleaning up homeless shelters over the past five years.
By comparison, San Francisco spent a record of 72.5 million dollars in street cleanliness in 2019 and has been ranked in the top half of cleanest cities in the US.
Since then, the city Department of Public Works’ street cleaning division received a budget increase of $16.7 million in 2023. C.B.S. reported.
The Golden Gate Bridge tower with the San Francisco cityscape in the background
Afternoon view of the skyline of downtown San Bernardino, California, which was the fourth dirtiest city in the United States due to poor air quality. Many other cities in the Golden State have poor air quality due to pollution.
Ontario, California, photographed from above. The city is tied with San Bernardino for the worst air quality in the country
Riverside, California also has the worst air quality in the country along with Ontario and San Bernardino. All three cities are east of Los Angeles and close to many factories and warehouses.
San Bernardino, known colloquially as the ‘armpit‘ California among locals, was the fourth dirtiest city due primarily to poor air quality.
Riverside and Ontario, which are also in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, were tied with San Bernardino for the worst air quality in the country.
These cities adjacent to Los Angeles, once filled with orange groves and vineyards, have largely been replaced by highly polluted warehouses. About a billion square feet of warehouse space to be exact, The edge reported in 2022.
San Bernardino residents were the most dissatisfied with their city’s cleanliness for the second year in a row, according to study data.
He LawnStarter The study also stated that the southwestern United States had problems with drinking water contamination.
“With the exception of Salt Lake City, all of the Southwest cities we ranked violated the Safe Drinking Water Act at least once in 2020, the year of the most recent EPA data,” according to the study.
Las Vegas, the 19th dirtiest city in the world, had the most unsafe water in the Southwest.
Las Vegas had the most unsafe water in the southwestern US, study says
Salt Lake City, Utah, was the only city in the Southwest that had no major drinking water violations in 2020, according to the most recent EPA data.
Virginia Beach, Virginia, was ranked the cleanest city in the United States. It was tied with three other cities in California and New Jersey for having the fewest per capita greenhouse gas emissions from large facilities.
However, the most obvious image that comes to mind when we think of a dirty city is that of littering.
Interestingly, the study’s authors claim that Ohioans specifically have a unique habit of throwing their used cigarettes on the ground.
Local media in Northeast Ohio have taken notice of the large number of discarded cigarette butts in the state, with cleveland.com reporting on information campaigns in 2021 to discourage people from littering.
Five Ohio cities ranked by LawnStarter were among the localities with the highest proportion of smokers in the US.
Many cities near water in California, Virginia and North Carolina were the cleanest on the list.
Virginia Beach, Virginia, was ranked the cleanest city in the U.S., although the study says being on the coast isn’t the end of having a trash-free subway.
In fact, inland cities like Fremont, California, and Winston-Salem, North Carolina, were also among the most pristine.