Cities Clean as a Whistle or Full of Filth
What's
the cleanest big city in the U.S.? How about the dirtiest? Reader's
Digest decided to find out, by analyzing data to score each of
the 50 largest cities on air quality, water quality, industrial
pollution (toxics), Superfund sites, and sanitation. Rather than
just the cities themselves, they looked at metropolitan areas,
which include surrounding counties and suburbs. (This can have
a real effect on a place's score.
Chicago, for example, has excellent
water but its score is brought down by problems in the outlying
areas). Because this evaluation only looked at the 50 largest
places, there may be smaller cities that are much cleaner or dirtier
than these — and because the scores represent relative rankings,
that a city comes in first or last in a given category does not
necessarily mean it's perfectly pristine or dangerously filthy.
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