Philly Not Bad In Soot, Bad Everywhere Else

Time to pick on Pittsburgh, who the Flyers are playing in the Stanley Cup semifinals starting Friday. In another in a long line of meaningless rankings — this one rating “kinda meaningless” as opposed to “completely meaningless” — Pittsburgh has ranked #1 in the American Lung Association’s list of America’s Sootiest Cities.

Not that Philly is doing any better. Philly got a 6.3 from stateoftheair.org and had 19 “orange days.” Shit! 19 orange days! a six-point-three! And, look, Philly is #11 in ozone and 22nd in short-term partical pollution.

The State of the Air 2008 blog says it, uh, well:

When I found out that this year’s report card reveals that that one in 10 people in the U.S. live in areas with unhealthy levels of all three types of pollution: ozone, short-term and year-round particle pollution, I immediately went online to check the levels in my own state to see how this affected me and my family.

Me, too! Anyway, where were we? Oh, yeah, Pittsburgh. Those sootmongers!