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Economy

Most and Least Polluted Big American Cities

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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Most and Least Polluted Big American Cities

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[cnxvideo id=”655354″ placement=”ros”]A great deal has been made of the filth in cities in places like China and India. However, there are large cities in America that are very polluted, and several others that are pristine. Realtor.com has put together a list of the 10 at each end of the spectrum.

Realtor.com used the following methodology, the factors of which were compared in America’s 150 largest cities:

Toxic chemicals released from factories
Greenhouse gas emissions per square mile
Number of Superfund sites per square mile
Air quality, measured by the number of clear days in a year
Water quality, measured by contaminants like lead, copper, arsenic, nitrate, and more

Most lists of polluted cities rely primarily on air quality.

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The 10 most polluted:

  1. Philadelphia
  2. Los Angeles
  3. Houston
  4. New York
  5. Chicago
  6. New Orleans
  7. Reading, Pennsylvania
  8. Salt Lake City
  9. Baton Rouge, Louisiana
  10. Milwaukee

Interestingly, most of the old industrial cities like Buffalo and Detroit are not on the list.

The 10 cleanest:

  1. Naples, Florida
  2. Salem, Oregon
  3. Ocala, Florida
  4. Anchorage, Alaska
  5. Santa Rosa, California
  6. Ann Arbor, Michigan
  7. Eugene, Oregon
  8. Little Rock, Arkansas
  9. Salisbury, Maryland
  10. Salinas, California

Notable, there is a concentration on the west coast and another couple in Florida.

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Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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