Most Polluted Cities in the U.S. | Hacker News Reader

Most Polluted Cities in the U.S.

lung.org

11 pointsMrResearcher10 comments

Almost every county in Washington is F for particle pollution. Meanwhile, New Jersey doesn’t have a county below B for particle pollution. The rest of the west coast is the same. Is there something coming in from the Pacific Ocean to be causing this?

It's the smoke from the annual forest fires of late summer and early fall throughout the West Coast. That smoke makes for really high individual 24-hour readings, plus ends up skewing the annual averages as well.

Why is California pollution so bad? The top 4 cities for 2 of the 3 metrics are CA. For the 3rd metric, 3 of the 4 are CA. Consider that NYC/NJ is denser. This isn’t just a population map. Wondering how much geography has to do with it.

Public transit isn't as good, wildfires, and lack of rain means whatever is in the air lingers for longer.

Among other reasons, wind blows to CA from Northern China where they are very much into coal. That air hits the mountain ranges we have inland and all the pollutants hang out.

See https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2006/10/08/c...

>By short term particle pollution

>#11 Yakima

>https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_eruption_of_Mount_St._H...

The most polluted city in US is cleaner than average European city and 10 times cleaner than Beijing.

https://aqicn.org/map/world

Not what I'm seeing from the linked map -- I see a 179 in the US and doubt the average is >180 in Europe? Eye-balling it, Europe looks about comparable to the East-Coast numbers, maybe +10.

Also, afaict that map shows recent, "live", up-to-date numbers, I assume seasons and day/night play a big role there.

Apparently, Los Angeles is no 1.

The research is referenced in the WSJ article, which is behind a paywall: wsj.com/articles/the-places-with-the-worst-air-pollution-in-america-52ae23be

Maybe plant more non-native palm trees. They’re top tier at removing CO2 and ozone :)

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