We love the natural beauty and geographical diversity of New York state. You've got the mountains, the beach, the lowlands, and valleys, and most everything in between. But is there an unsanitary underbelly to the Empire State? That side they don't want you to know about, and we're not just talking about some of the politicians. A new study ranked the nation's grossest states, and unfoentlety New York didn't do so well. Do we want to believe these findings?

A website called Zippia put together a list of America's grossest states, and New York came in at #10. Not too great. So, how did they come up with these numbers? Zippia took data from the dirtiness of the air, trash, or the percentage of each state that is landfill, and spread if illness. Now, if you look at numbers from Air Filters Delivered, you'll see that New York's air is pretty clean compared to the majority of the country. Now, if you use the data collected from the EPA on how much of our land is taken up by landfills, again, we're not that bad (especially compared to places like Pennsylvania and New Jersey).

Where are they getting our bad scores from? Not surprisingly, it would have to be the CDC's numbers on illnesses. It certainly doesn't' help that New York state (particularly the city) was at the epicenter of a major pandemic. The city's population density doesn't help, even in normal years, for transmission of viruses and contagious disease.

When it comes to gross, the Northeast didn't so so well. according to this study. Pennsylvania came in 4th, New Jersey 6th, Connecticut 7th, and Deleware right ahead of us at 9th. Virginia was named the grossest state overall, and Alaska the least. It should be noted that most of the states towards the least grossest side of the spectrum tend to be the most sparsely populated. More people produce more trash, and spread more illnesses. Again, please note that this study is not scientific, and there are many other factors that determine the cleanliness of a state or area.

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