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Attleboro is By Far the Most Polluted Town in Massachusetts – New Study

Author Beasley Media Editorial

What is the most polluted town in Massachusetts? You might immediately jump to thinking about our biggest cities: Boston, Worcester, Quincy? No, no, no. Springfield? Nope. As you probably can already guess since you’re an attentive article reader who clicked that headline, Attleboro is the most polluted town in Massachusetts, according to a new study by IQAir. The study goes into so much detail about polluted countries and regions around the world. In this article, we’ll focus on results for Massachusetts but if you want lots and I mean LOTS of additional info check out that link.

In Massachusetts Attleboro was found to be most polluted – and it wasn’t even close. IQAir used numbers expressing the concentration of air pollutants in micrograms per cubic meter of air to rank most to least polluted towns and cities in Mass. When you look at the Top 5 Most Polluted Towns in MA you’ll notice that the jumps in concentration of air pollutants in micrograms per cubic meter of air raises by less than a microgram with each rank jump. That is, until we jump from #2 to Attleboro at #1. Take a look:

The Most Polluted Town in Massachusetts – Top 5

(readings in micrograms per cubic meter of air)

5) Agawam: 8.8
4) Acton: 8.8
3) Greenfield: 9.1
2) Springfield: 9.3
1) Attleboro: 15.8

That Attleboro jump seems wild to me. If I lived in Attleboro I’d personally want answers, like “why?” That seems like a good place to start.
But before we get too uppity, some perspective: Bangladesh ranked worst in the world for air pollution with a score of 79.9. Compare that to Attleboro’s 15.8 and suddenly things look much less dire. We should, however, look for ways to improve as air pollution is a major worldwide concern.

The World Health Organization says “the combined effects of ambient air pollution and household air pollution is associated with 7 million premature deaths annually.” They also look at air pollution as one of the biggest issues facing our civilization today.

Let’s move it from air pollution to another type of pollution – HIGHWAY POLLUTION. Have you noticed an influx of news stories about big trucks spilling all sorts of random things on our roadways? Here’s some of the weirder highways spills from over the years:

Mass Pike Battery Acid Spill Today! Here's 7 other weird highway spills

  • BATTERY ACID

    Auburn, Massachusetts – March 20, 2024: A truck hauling nearly 700 vehicle batteries crashed. Battery acid and sulfuric acid spilled onto the roads shutting things down and causing a challenging cleaning situation. Sounds like the beginning of a Batman movie because I feel like a supervillain must have been spawned at the scene. No serious injuries reported by the way.

  • 10,000 GALLONS OF MILK

    Auburn, Massachusetts – A tanker carrying milk rolled over spilling 10,000 gallons of milk onto the Mass Pike, very close to the battery acid spill we just covered, which happened only a month prior. I’ll take the milk over the battery acid any day. But daaaaannnnnngggg the milk spill must have stunk for weeks!!

  • CHOCOLATE

    Westönnen, Germany – A road was closed after a tank of chocolate in a factory spilled and poured into the street. Unfortunately the chocolate quickly solidified causing more of a problem as 25 firefighters worked to clear the chocolate using shovels, hot water and blowtorches.

  • SLIME EELS

    Portland, Oregon – Oh… my… gosh. This one is NASTY. A truck filled with live eels overturned and covered passing cars in slime after 7,500 pounds of slime eels (also known as hagfish) spilled out onto the highway. You have to watch this:

  • SKITTLES

    Wisconsin – Hundreds of thousands of red Skittles were found spilled on a road in Dodge County. Mysteriously nobody reported it happening. Also mysteriously, it was only red Skittles and they had no “S” printed on them but locals say they were definitely Skittles based on the smell…… and hopefully not the taste. No 5 second rule here!

  • LEGOS

    West Virginia – Local TV station WDTV reported, “Around 5:15 Sunday afternoon, there was a roadway obstruction of Lego blocks on I-79 around mile marker 117 in Harrison County.” Thankfully clean up workers weren’t barefoot.

  • DEADPOOL COMICS

    Colombus, Ohio – A semi carrying a shipment from Diamond Comic Distributors was crashed into by another semi spewing Deadpool comics all over the freeway there. Deadpool is a very Rated R comic so the streets of Ohio were a little dirtier until all the comics could be stacked and tracked out of there.

Jackson Blue has been on Boston airwaves for over 20 years. He is a foodie family person with a passion for having fun forever. Jackson likes to write about food, restaurants, Massachusetts and Boston happenings.

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Author Beasley Media Editorial
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