5 highly polluted urban areas you don’t want to live if you can help it{images warning}

[xchrom]

http://grist.org/cities/5-highly-polluted-urban-areas-you-dont-want-to-live-if-you-can-help-it/

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***SNIP

5. New York City

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That factory icon in Brooklyn marks the Brooklyn Navy Yard Cogeneration Project, a power plant that was responsible for almost 870,000 metric tons of CO2 in 2012. That’s down from over 1.1 million emitted in 2011, but it still pumped out over 500 metric tons of nitrous oxide. That pollutant (known in shorthand as “NOx”) can cause reproductive problems for women exposed to it over an extended term. Nationally, NOx emissions increased 4 percent between 1990 and 2011.

4. Baton Rouge-New Orleans, La.

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That stretch from Baton Rouge to New Orleans, with chemical processing plants marking the route, is known infamously as “Cancer Alley” by environmental justice advocates and fenceline communities that have suffered under the fog of pollution for decades. In one industrial area of Iberville Parish alone (right below South Baton Rouge on the map) there are 23 facilities.

3. Long Beach-Bakersfield, Calif.

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The Chevron Refinery in El Segundo (near the circled 8 along the coast) spewed almost 3.5 million metric tons of C02 in 2012, almost the same amount it emitted in 2010. It also flares and spits sulfuric oxide, or SOx — over 57,000 pounds this year alone — which is linked to asthma when one is exposed to it for as short as five minutes.

[NYC_SKP]

1. K/R but Bakersfield is 150 miles from Long Beach with a mountain range separating them.

Both are polluted due to petroleum processing installations, and Bakersfield smells like oil on many days as you drive through it.

I'm told the residents get used to it.