Life in a big city can often seem downright hazardous to your health. There are overly aggressive drivers, reckless bicyclists, ill-tempered hot dog vendors, and pedestrians more engrossed in their Tinder accounts than the oncoming traffic—and that’s just when you’re trying to cross the street. Try fighting over the only-available taxi, the best bar stools during the NBA finals, or the last pair of Louboutins on sale in your size.
But most perilous of all might just be the environment itself.
That air you’re sucking in? It’s thick with exhaust fumes, secondhand smoke, and whatever’s being cooked up in that sketchy warehouse around the corner. Want to ease your scratchy throat with a cool drink of water from the nearby fountain? Watch out, it might contain lead!
Pollution has long been as integral to American urban life as slow-walking tourists, besuited executives, and trendy restaurants. But here’s the good news: There are metropolitan areas where you can enjoy the benefits of city life and breathe freely (and safely) while you do it.
Our data team crunched some numbers to find just where those urban Edens might be, and then donned biohazard gear to determine their most soiled siblings. A pattern soon emerged: The cleanest cities are typically set amid agricultural communities, with a national forest or natural reserve nearby. Meanwhile, the most polluted cities are former industrial hubs in the Rust Belt and along the Gulf of Mexico.
Overall, though, pollution in the U.S. has declined quite a bit in recent years. The nation’s industrial facilities released 25% less toxic chemicals in 2015 than in 2005, according to data from the Environmental Protection Agency. Give the credit to green chemistry, improved waste management, and fewer industrial facilities, says EPA spokesman Robert Daguillard.
“Air quality has gotten much better because of preventions that were put into place under the 1970 Clean Air Act,” says Janice Nolen, assistant vice president of the American Lung Association. The federal law was designed to limit air pollution.
And the impact is being felt. Los Angeles, once the American poster child for smog, still has some of the nation’s worst air quality, but it’s been steadily improving for decades. There were only six clear L.A. days (where air pollution poses little risk) in 1980, according to the EPA. Last year there were 65.
Despite the improvements, about half of Americans still live with unhealthy levels of air pollution, Nolen notes.
The Sunshine State might be best known for its oranges, brilliantly clothed retirees, and propensity for swing votes, but it also leads the country in air quality. With sea winds sweeping over the mostly flat terrain from both its east and west coasts, noxious emissions tend to be blown away. And there aren’t that many to start with: Florida has never been a heavy industrial state. The mainstays of the state’s economy—tourism, agriculture, and international trade—are all relatively light in pollution.
The cleanest city in our analysis, Naples, in southwest Florida, is famous as an ecotourism destination. Surrounded by natural reserves like the Everglades, Ten Thousand Islands, and Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, it also has one of the few remaining undisturbed mangrove estuaries in North America.
“Collier County [which includes Naples] has more acres of protected lands than any other county in Florida,” says Renee Wilson, spokeswoman for Rookery Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve. “This is mostly due to the wetland characteristic of the Everglades … 110,000 acres of protected sanctuary.”
Tucked in Central Florida’s horse country, Ocala (No. 3) is home to a national forest with the world’s largest sand pine tree habitat—a glorious 673 square miles of vegetation, absorbing carbon dioxide in the air and pumping out fresh oxygen. Not enough for you? Check out the crystal-clear water of Silver Springs, best known for its star turn in the (many) underwater fight scenes of the classic Sean Connery–era James Bond movie “Thunderball.”
Oregon, the green state
While Southern California has a lousy rep when it comes to pollution, two agricultural communities in Northern California are exactly the opposite.
Salinas (No. 10), which bills itself as the “Salad Bowl of the World” (you can’t make this up, folks), grows roughly 70% of the nation’s lettuce. Nobel Prize–winning author John Steinbeck grew up here, and wrote lyrically about the region’s golden beauty in his 1952 novel, “East of Eden.”
More than a half-century later, Salinas Valley is still agricultural. Low industrial and traffic emissions, and openness to the sea, keep its air among the cleanest in the nation. It’s one of a handful of cities that have a low concentration of all major categories of harmful air pollutants.
Drive 50 miles north of San Francisco, and you enter a different world: Wine country, redwood forests, farms, and rivers are all part of the landscape of Santa Rosa (No. 5). Pollutants there are virtually nonexistent—the whole metro produced 121.2 pounds of toxic chemicals in 2015. To put it into perspective, the New York metro produced 630,000 times more.
OK, let’s go to the dirty side:
The Rust Belt has retired numerous coal-fired plants and made major efforts to clean up its air in the past three decades, but new environmental challenges have emerged: Pennsylvania has become the new hot spot for natural gas and oil production, along with all the toxic output that comes from it. The worst polluter in the country is Philadelphia, where a whopping 13.4 million pounds of poisonous chemicals were released in 2015 by oil refineries, shipyards, and auto manufacturers, the EPA reported.
The situation is most dire in Southwest Philly, where crude-oil trains chug through like clockwork. They’re sometimes called “bomb trains,” because the oil has an unwelcome tendency to occasionally catch fire and explode. Plumes of white smoke from oil refineries can be seen and sniffed from most residents’ backyards. The smoke isn’t always white, either—it was pink when a boiler exploded at the Veolia steam energy plant last year and black when fire broke out at the Philadelphia Energy Solutions refinery the year before.
Almost half of Philadelphia children living in poverty have asthma, according to researchers at the University of Pennsylvania.
“There are little lungs that are still developing that are taking in lots of toxic air. [They] are particularly susceptible to these pollutants,” says Philly resident Christine Dolle with Moms Clean Air Force, a national community of parents working to combat air pollution. “As a parent, I wouldn’t want my kids swinging on the swing 20 feet from [crude-oil train]. Would you?”
The Gulf of Mexico’s ‘Dead Zone’
Salt Lake City (No. 8) may appear to be a center of clean living (thanks, Mormons!) and pristine wilderness (thanks, snow-capped mountains!), but as it turns out, those picturesque peaks are actually bad for air quality. Cold air gets stuck between the mountains, trapping the toxic emissions from cars and industry. In the winter, Salt Lake City can be shrouded in smog for weeks in a row. Last year, the city barely saw clear air for half the year, according to the EPA.
West of Salt Lake City, Kennecott Utah Copper has the largest open copper mine in the world. Its power plant, smelter, and refinery released more than 200 million pounds of toxic chemicals into the air, water, and soil in 2015, according to EPA data.
But everyday human activity is responsible for much of the air’s contamination.
“The problem is automobiles, trucks, transportation that account for 50% of air pollution. … We are all part of it, we all pollute,” says Ted Wilson, a former mayor of Salt Lake City and director of Utah Clean Air Partnership.
* Toxic chemicals from factories were measured by total released amount per square mile and a calculated score that indicates the exposure and toxicity of those chemicals. The score used the EPA’s Risk-Screening Environmental Indicators, which take into account the amount of toxic chemicals released, each chemical’s relative toxicity, and potential human exposure.
Data source: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Superfund Program, Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program, Toxics Release Inventory Program, Air Quality Index, National Water Quality Monitoring Council
