Hometown Shame

Smoggy Houston makes the list of America's Top 10 Toxic Cities

Forbes magazine released its list of the nation's top 10 most toxic cities, and unfortunately, Houston ranks number seven.

The ranking considers several factors, including the number of Superfund sites — meaning out-of-use areas that contain hazardous waste — in cities with populations of 500,000 or more. Philadelphia, the No. 1 most toxic city in the nation, contains 50 such sites.

Houston nabbed a top 10 ranking, which Forbes speculates is due to our density of oil refineries, petrochemical plants and biomedical industry. Houston had the second-highest toxic release amount of all the cities on the list (Salt Lake City had the worst).

Californian metro areas claimed four of the top 10 spots, with the full top 10 ranking from highest to lowest toxicity as follows: Philadelphia, Bakersfield (Calif.), Fresno (Calif.), New York, Baton Rouge (La.), Los Angeles, Houston; St. Louis, Salt Lake City and Riverside-San Bernardino, Calif.

Tell us: Does the ranking surprise you?

this week's hot headlines

Favorite Montrose brunch restaurant's major setback leads week's top stories

Dough Zone Midtown exterior

Courtesy of Dough Zone

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Editor's note: It's time to recap the top stories on CultureMap from this past week.

1. Favorite Montrose brunch restaurant's highly anticipated return hits setback. The restaurant's reopening has been pushed back to 2024.

2. Houston's newest soup dumpling house sets opening date in familiar Midtown space. We're looking forward to future dumpling crawls to decide on our favorite.

3. Houston pizza maestro retools his wildly successful new Heights restaurant after overwhelming response. The chef says he'd be a "supervillain" if he figured out how to meet so much demand in such a short amount of time.

4. New York Times names 2 must-try Houston eateries to coveted 50 most exciting restaurants list. A new Southern restaurant and a classic Mexican establishment made the list.

5. Ken Hoffman applauds new Texas law that fines service animal impersonators $1K. "As much as I love my dog, I don’t impose her on others," our columnist writes.

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