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Roaches Love East Harlem, Chinatown, And LES — Not UES
By
Ben Muessig
Published Dec 14, 2009
Modified Dec 14, 2009
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By
Ben Muessig
Published Dec 14, 2009
Modified Dec 14, 2009
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The city has put its pest infestation statistics online, allowing New Yorkers to see just how vermin-ridden our neighborhoods really are. The new Environmental Public Health Tracking Portal allows visitors to create maps depicting the percentages of households infested by roaches as well as rats and mice.
According to Brick Underground, Manhattan's least buggy community is the Upper East Side, where only 9.5 percent of households spotted a roach every day for a month. In Greenwich Village, the Financial District, StuyTown, and Turtle Bay, 12.7 percent of residents polled spotted roaches daily, compared to 19.1 percent of in the Upper West Side. Statistics show that 23 percent of Chelsea, Clinton, and Midtown homes had roach problems — but those numbers were greatly eclipsed by the Lower East Side and Chinatown's 42 percent and East Harlem's 51 percent.
Meanwhile in Brooklyn, 26 percent of Williamsburg and Greenpoint residents spotted roaches in their homes daily, edging out Brooklyn Heights and Fort Greene's 25.4, and Park Slope's 18.6.
Borough-wide statistics reveal that Staten Island had the lowest percentage of infestations, with just 7 percent of residents recording roach sightings and 8.7 percent recording mouse sightings. In both cases, Staten Island was followed by Queens, Manhattan, Brooklyn, and finally the Bronx, where a whopping 46.3 percent of residents spotted roaches in their homes in the past month, and 49.8 percent saw mice or signs of mice in the past 90 days. The stats are well and good (and rather disgusting), but the folks at Bedbugger.com are angry that the city isn't tracking the most horrific of infestations — bed bugs.
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