I just found this... and I don't know about you but I think it's wrong.?

Question

ok so apparantly these are the dirtiest cities in the US.

10. Washington, DC

9. Detroit, Michigan

8. Sacramento CA

7. Salt Lake City, Utah

6. Logan, Utah

5. Birmingham, AL

4. Bakersfield Ca

3. Fresno Ca

2. Los Angeles Ca

1. Pittsburgh Pa

http://news.aol.com/story/_a/report-names-americas-sootiest-city/20080429162409990001#cmntbgn

there is the link... and first off I was like, whats up with those Utah cities? and then I'm like, wait where is Chicago or Atlanta or Houston or Indianapolis or St. Louis.... cities that are in top 50 polluted cities in the world... doesnt make sense...

Answer 1

6 and 7 are there due to the salt lake and the mining activities that go on in Utah.  Most people don't know that Utah is where we mine most of our shale which is converted to oil.

Answer 2

Air quality is based on many things , not just on population. If there are active smelters in the vicinity of those Utah cities it could cause their ratings.

Answer 3

Yeah.. different polls about cities use really different factors to define the best and worst.  I'm still surprised D.C. is there though ...

Answer 4

pittsburgh is not the dirtiest... the enviro (hippies) guy was testing the air 15 miles away from the city near a coke plants that was on the edge of allegheny county..

Answer 5

In the case of Salt Lake City the reason it's listed is that we get temperature inversions here that trap all the air in the valleys for extended periods of time. There are refineries here as well as a million or so cars so that can quickly get to be a problem until a weather pattern comes along to clean out the inversion. Logan has it's own inversion process which works the same way, but I'm still surprised to see it listed since it's a small college town.

The key thing is LA has taken steps to reduce it's small particle pollution but not it's ozone production, and it's the combination of the two that is most damaging. So even on a bad air day in Salt Lake City, you're much less likely to have respiratory distress than a resident of Beijing or Mexico City and on most days you're in air far cleaner than the air in LA.

Answer 6

Its wrong.  Number 6 and 7 do not belong there.