America's most toxic cities - where's Baltimore?
Here's a listing where you don't want to be No. 1. Forbes.com, which is fond of doing lists, has come up with "America's most toxic cities." The business news site has ranked the nation's 40 largest metro areas by the dirtiness of their air and water, the number of places spewing toxic pollution and the number of Superfund hazardous waste dumps.
Atlanta earns the dubious distinction as forbes.com's most toxic city. It lacks the smokestack industries one might typically associate with pollution, but the sprawl capital of America has some of the worst air quality, thanks to all the motor vehicles cruising its spaghetti bowl of pavement.
Following Atlanta are Detroit, Houston, Chicago, Philadelphia, Cleveland and Los Angeles.
Where's Baltimore? It ranks 32nd on the forbes.com list. But that doesn't mean Charm City is all that clean, because oddly the list is in reverse order, with cleanest on top and dirtiest at the bottom. When the list of 40 is flipped to rank the most toxic first, B'more comes in 9th. Not such a green showing.
One has to wonder if forbes.com hasn't piled on a bit, though. It lists 37 Superfund sites in Baltimore, when the Environmental Protection Agency only counts 11 in the city. The total doubles when the suburbs are included, but that's still well short of the figure used in the rankings.
But hey, look on the bright side. Baltimore is only slightly worse than Portland, Oregon (#31, or 10th most toxic) often regarded as one of the crunchiest green places in the country.
Seem like a fair ranking to you? Or a bad hit?
(2007 Baltimore Sun photo by Kim Hairston)
Comments
Why is it that Baltimore only gets national press for negative things? There are a lot of complaints, and unfortunately, a vacuum of leadership at the top of the city has kicked the can down the road. Please! Let's get some new people in who have the vision that Schaeffer had and the drive to get it done NOW.
Posted by: Brent | November 3, 2009 3:07 PM
Thanks to Mayor Dixon we finally have a cleaner city. For years the city has been filthy, now the city is cleaner, roads are being repaired etc. Mayor Dixon actually cares, keep up the good work.
Posted by: Lee | November 3, 2009 6:26 PM
I believe Baltimore is trying as Cash did not become flowing into Maryland until some recent Stimulus dollars tricked in .I see the Port of Baltimore is doing A clean Diesel Program with Tug Boats, Trains & Trucks. The Bay clean Up has been ongoing and some progress can be seen. This did not happen overnight where Big Giants Like GM whom produced for Years and left behind it's mess to the City & State clean up. Beth Steel another so lets give emphasis to the fact that Baltimore & Maryland are trying to go Green it will take many years to yield higher scores like forbes. Safe containment is the major factor everyone needs do there part.Baltimre is a Great City
Posted by: Don | November 3, 2009 9:04 PM
I signed up for AirAlerts from Clean Air Partners early this year. To offer one bit of evidence contrary to the Forbes article, I have received only a couple of notices warning of poor air quality in Baltimore. In a recent newsletter from them, "If AirAlerts are any indication of the improvements in air quality, then we have a cause for celebration! These alerts continue to decline as monitored air quality improved in both the Washington and Baltimore regions, making this past ozone season the best in over a decade."
Posted by: Baltidome | November 4, 2009 1:55 PM
It's interesting that one of the components of foul air is fluoride emissions. Yet almost all of these cities voluntarily add unnecessary and health-robbing fluoride chemicals into the water supply that are derived from industry trapping their illegal fluoride air emissions.
Silicofluorides, scraped from the smokestacks of phosphate fertilizer companies, are allowed to contain trace amounts of lead, arsenic, mercury and other toxins. This is what is trucked as hazardous material through the highways and byways of America and dumped without purification into the water supply and called fluoridation, which is the government's failed effort to reduce tooth decay in tap water drinkers. More info: http://www.FluorideAction.Net
Fluoride is one toxin you can remove from your environment and body if you all tell your legislators to stop adding it into your drinking water, your bodies and your neighborhoods. Otherwise why should they bother? And you can't complain over industry polluting the environment when it's your own inaction that causes some of it.
Posted by: nyscof | November 16, 2009 5:45 AM