Dirty Places: These Tourist Destinations Are Filthier Than You Know
You have to feel sorry for neat freaks — you know, those super-obsessive germophobes whose homes are clean enough to perform open-heart surgery while manufacturing microchips. For people like this, traveling involves venturing out of their squeaky-clean environments and into a world where the standards for cleanliness aren’t nearly as high as theirs.
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Yes, the sad fact is that traveling is, by nature, a dirty business (don’t get us started on airplanes and hotel rooms. Yuck!). But there are some destinations that, for various reasons — terrible air quality, trashiness, litter, and the general ick factor — might just be too much for the Monica Gellers, the Felix Ungers and Sheldon Coopers of the world to handle. Here’s Yahoo Travel’s list of the dirtiest destinations.
Down and dirty N.Y.C. (Photo: iStock)
A lot of New Yorkers view the city’s notoriously down and dirty vibe as a badge of honor. But that doesn’t change the “dirty” part. N.Y.C. was no. 1 in Travel + Leisure’s “America’s Dirtiest Cities” survey, This is probably no surprise to anyone who’s spent time in the city’s grimy subways or to anyone who knows the phrase “New York minute” best describes how quickly after it hits the ground that N.Y.C. snow turns from white to black. To put things in perspective, New York’s five boroughs have 2 million rats and 8 million people. Even the city’s most viral video had a rat dragging a pizza down the subway stairs, making the pizza-loving rodent the unofficial mascot for a dirty city.
WATCH: Pizza Rat, because it never gets old…
Video: YouTube
Not exactly the picture of Hollywood glamour. (Photo: iStock)
Stop laughing, you anti-New York Angelenos. Your town isn’t exactly so spotless, either. L.A. doesn’t come in too far behind N.Y.C. when it comes to cleanliness, thanks to its high concentration of ozone, the lung-damaging component of smog. As of last year, Los Angeles clocked in at 110 parts per billion of ozone, way above the Environmental Protection Agency’s 70 ppb limit. In fact, it was no. 1 on “Most Ozone” category of the American Lung Association’s Most Polluted Cities list (it also was no. 5 in the “Year-Round Particle Pollution” and “Short-Term Particle Pollution” categories as well).
Related: Are These the Dirtiest Hotels in America?
New Delhi, India
New Delhi recently earned a dubious global distinction, thanks to its notoriously dirty air. (Photo: iStock)
The worst kind of dirt is the kind you can’t see. New Delhi has such impurities in abundance, namely the kind you breathe. The World Health Organization recently named the Indian capital the most polluted city in the world, with levels of harmful airborne particles more than 15 times the safety threshold. Its dirty air levels far surpass those of another famously polluted city, Beijing. You know a city is filthy when an air purifier manufacturer puts out a press release touting a big sale there; as the New York Times reported, Blueair did just that back in January when it announced it sold 1,800 air purifiers to the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi.
Related: Airplane or Giant Germ-Mobile? 10 Ways to Stay Healthy While Flying
South Carolina
Apparently, too many people in South Carolina ignore the message in this Folly Beach, SC sign. (Photo: Tim Parkinson/Flickr)
Charleston is lovely, as is Hilton Head. So why is South Carolina on this list? Well, in last year’s American State Litter Scorecard, the advocacy group American Society for Public Administration named the Palmetto State the country’s Dirtiest State. The label was based on what it called South Carolina’s problem with illegal littering and dumping in public areas, and its laws regarding refuse disposal. But the report also dinged South Carolina for a dubious stat: having an unusually high number of 16- to 25-year-olds, the age group considered most likely to litter illegally. Is S.C. really dirty, or is it just being penalized by litter profiling? (It’s really dirty.)
Things get a little messy in New Orleans. (Photo: iStock)
The rice isn’t the only thing that’s dirty in New Orleans. It was right behind N.Y.C. at second place in T + L’s Dirtiest Cities list. Plus, according to a Seattle Times analysis of the Census Bureau’s American Housing Survey, New Orleans was the no. 1 pest-infested city, with 46 percent of residents reporting sightings of rats, roaches, mice, or (shudder) some “other” kind of creature. The Big Easy’s notoriously hot and humid weather, the old buildings, and the delicious food all tend to attract dirt, grime, and little critters. Let’s not even talk about the unsanitary shenanigans that go on in this town during Mardi Gras; every year when that extended bash is over, the city cleans up an estimated 50 to 150 tons of trash.
Related: Fact: People are Gross. And These B&B Owners Have the Evidence to Prove It
Proof that Vegas is all kinds of dirty? This Vegas sidewalk literally is littered with postcards for “escorts.” (Photo: Angelina Earley/Flickr)
Of course, Vegas isn’t exactly known for being clean in any sense of the word. But there’s some data to back up Sin City’s well-known penchant for getting a little dirty. It cracked the top 10 in both the American Lung Association’s Most Polluted Cities list (no. 9 in the Ozone category) and the Census Bureau’s list of places with the most roaches reported (no. 7, with nearly 30 percent of residents reporting the hard-to-kill buggers). The state it’s in, Nevada, is no. 2, right behind South Carolina, on the American State Litter Scorecard. Need any more convincing that Vegas isn’t the place for germophobes? Just think about the fact that 41 million people visited Las Vegas last year — so that’s roughly 82 million grubby hands touching the chips, slot machine handles, dice and playing cards in the casinos. Dirt that happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.
The waters of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Pro surfer Kelly Slater at the World Surf League event last May in Rio. Slater complained that the polluted water made him sick. (Photo: AP)
The headlines coming out of Rio ahead of next year’s 2016 Summer Olympic Games are enough to keep many clean freaks from coming anywhere near its famous beaches for a while. According to an Associated Press independent study, there were high viral levels from untreated sewage in all of the water venues for Rio 2016, including the venues where swimming, rowing, and triathlon events are scheduled to take place. The polluted waters have caused trouble for that country’s sports scene before; AP reports that at a Rio surfing event earlier this year, American pro surfer Kelly Slater complained the contaminated water made him sick. Now, there are concerns over floating trash where the sailing events are to take place in next year’s Summer Games. When the athletes parade at the Summer Games opening ceremonies, we’ll be able to tell which ones are competing in the water events; they’ll be the ones wearing hazmat suits.
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