There might be something funny about any study that ranks Las Vegas as the least toxic city in the United States.

But as long as they gave us a good rating, we’ll believe it.

Published last week was a study compiled by Fortune Magazine that ranked the 40 largest metropolitan areas based upon toxicity.

The results showed that Altanta is the most toxic city in the United States, while Las Vegas ranked the least. The process they used to calculate this was to count the number of facilities that reported releasing toxins, the days per year the air pollution was above healthy levels, and the total number of supersites (areas designated by the federal government for clean-up).

The study also took into consideration not only the city itself, but the surrounding metropolitan areas. Other metropolitan areas will high toxicity levels included Detroit, Chicago, Houston and Philadelphia, while some of the least toxic include; Sacramento, Riverside, Austin, and Seattle.

Surprisingly Norfolk ranked seventh least toxic.

Apparently, our metro area does not have a sufficient number of factories to increase toxicity levels to dangerous levels. Certainly, the closing of the Franklin Paper Mill, though bad for our local economy, will  contribute to sustained low levels of toxicity for our area.

Also deserving credit is the hard work of the various Chesapeake Bay awareness programs has helped maintain the integrity and habitability of the Chesapeake Bay watershed, where Norfolk can be found.

Luckily, this is an uncommon site in Norfolk.

We must keep fighting for the environment in this area and around the country. This ranking is good for this area, showing how our hard work and dedication to the environment has paid off, but we have to continue being good stewards to the environment and preserve it for generations to come.

Though the quest to keep Norfolk and our area clean might begin with things like driving less, ultimately it will come down to the actions of our local and state governments.

According to the article, environmental advocates say weak regulations are to blame.

“We struggle to have strong environmental leadership,” said Jenette Gayer, policy advocate for Environment Georgia, an environmental advocacy organization. “For a lot of the chemicals people reported dumping, there are alternatives we should be helping them switch to.”

In Norfolk, a good place to start is the Norfolk Environmental Commission. It’s a great resource to learn about green living, recycling, wetlands restoration and neighborhood clean-ups. They meet on the third Tuesday of the month at 4 p.m., if you’d like to get involved. Contact information is on their site, or you can call John Deuel, executive coordinator for the commission, at (757) 441- 1347.

Norfolk will be as clean and livable as we demand it to be. Get involved.