Where are The World’s Dirtiest Cities? Forbes recently came up with a list. The 25 cities deemed the world’s dirtiest won their places on the list with disease-infested water supplies, life-threatening air pollution, plentiful raw sewage and rank public sanitation problems. Drum roll, puh-lease. The cities are:

1. Baku, Azerbaijan (pictured)

2. Dhaka, Bangladesh

3. Antananarivo, Madagascar

4. Port au Prince, Haiti

5. Mexico City, Mexico

6. Addis Abada, Ethiopia

7. Mumbai, India

8. Baghdad, Iraq

9. Almaty, Kazakhstan

10. Brazzaville, Congo

11. Ndjamena, Chad

12. Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

13. Bangui, Central African Republic

14. Moscow, Russia

15. Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso

16. Bamako, Mali

17. Pointe Noire, Congo

18. Lome, Togo

19. Conakry, Guinea Republic

20. Nouakchott, Mauritania

21. Niamey, Niger

22. Luanda, Angola

23. Maputo, Mozambique

24. New Delhi, India

25. Port Harcourt, Nigeria

Speaking of the United Arab Emirates (see previous post), I’m tres, tres intrigued by this carbon neutral city I hear the country has in the works. Construction on Masdar City broke ground early last month, but the $22 billion initiative is not slated for completion until 2016.

Ultimately, the world’s first carbon-neutral city will house 50,000 residents and 1,500 businesses. It will not allow cars, but will require residents and visitors to reply on public transportation. The entirety of the city’s power will come from solar and wind energy sources, and the local water supply will be provided through a combination of desalinization and waste water purification.

The development may not be finished for another eight years, but it will be inhabitable by sometime next year.

It seems the placebo effect is alive and kicking. Thank you, Airborne, for proving this scientific wonder to the general populous once again. Yesterday, the well-known peddler of herbal supplements aimed at travelers made headlines when it agreed to pay a $23.3 million settlement in a class action lawsuit brought against the company for false advertising. While Airborne refuses to admit any wrongdoing or false claims, its willingness to drop megabucks to halt the lawsuit speaks volumes.

According to AP news reports:

“There’s no credible evidence that what’s in Airborne can prevent colds or protect you from a germy environment,” said CSPI Senior nutritionist David Schardt. “Airborne is basically on overpriced, run-of-the-mill vitamin pill that’s been cleverly, but deceptively, marketed.”

I’ll admit it. I was one of the suckers who thought these things actually worked. God knows how many of those things I’ve taken. But I’m looking on the bright side. No more narsty glasses of fizzing Airborne before hopping on the plane.

If you were similarly duped, you could be eligible to receive a refund for the Airborne products you purchased. You can find info at the link below:

Airborne Settlement Information

Smoke a butt at the Swissotel Chicago, and you might as well hand the hotel management a cool $250 when you check out. Fines for smoking in non-smoking rooms are nothing new. But Swissotel’s approach is. Instead of letting smokers run wild with abandon, the 632-room property has begun paying its housekeeping staff to rat offenders out. If a housekeeper enters your room to do her daily clean up and suspects you’ve been sucking down cancer sticks, you get fined. She gets $10. It’s not a lot, but the hotel is betting it’s enough to inspire a keen sense of smell in its employees.

The hotel is currently renovating all of its rooms and going for a green certification, so we can understand their anal ‘tude. After all, unlike hotel guests, smoke never really leaves a room.

The semi-funny part? The hotel has let two former guests escape from fines. Why? As the Chicago Tribune’s story The Smoke Patrol puts it:

To date, 22 guests have gotten socked with fines — with two granted amnesty because it turned out that friends did the smoking, according to hotel officials.

Riiight. That’s what I used to tell my parents. Glad to know it still works.

At the risk of sounding like a traveling germ-phobic nutjob, I’ll admit I rarely get anywhere near an airport, bus or means of public transportation without fishing my trusty hand sanitizer out of my bag. And while I sometimes find myself wondering what happened to the free-spirited traveling self who would most certainly scoff at the more uptight version that exists today, I can say this: once you hit 30, getting sick starts to suck more. Way more.

While most hand sanitizers kill germs right when you apply them to your skin, SkinWear claims to continue killing pesky germs for hours and moisturize your skin at the same time (good for use during flights, when my skin starts to feel nigh on reptilian). The product is also non-toxic, biodegradable and vegetable-based. Once applied correctly, which requires rubbing the product into the skin for 60 seconds, SkinWear will do its thing through four rinses at the sink.

Not being scary germs ourselves, we can’t personally vouch for the product’s effectiveness. But not getting sick is good enough for me.

Travelers to the U.S., Caribbean and Canada will soon have 300 fewer properties in which to hole up with their cancer sticks. Sheraton Hotels and Four Points by Sheraton Hotels announced this morning plans to convert all smoking rooms to non-smoking rooms, a process scheduled for completion by year’s end.

Ah, we love it when hotels go smoke free. A totally smoke-free hotel lowers the likelihood that you’ll end up in a non-smoking room that has only been designated as such for, say, the three hours between the previous guest’s departure and your arrival.

One concern: the plans only call for “deep cleaning” the rooms and air conditioning units before rechristening them smoke-free accommodations. Now, with memories of our college dorm as our witness, you can’t “deep clean” smoke out of carpet, sofas, fabric, curtains, etc., and you certainly can’t get that stank out of a freaking air conditioning unit. Replace, folks. We implore you. You know we’re right.

Sheraton and Four Points by Sheraton Hotels Go Smoke-Free

I’ve been meaning to post this for two days now. Here’s an inspiring first-person story told by Charles van der Horst, a doctor who has traveled the world fighting H.I.V., to the New York Times.

It also happens to contain what might possibly be the most hilarious (and lip curling) travel-related paragraph I’ve read all week:

To this day, every place I go I find the time to exercise.

The ultimate eyebrow raiser is on the South African Airways flight back from Johannesburg to the United States. This endless trip is enough to drive anyone crazy. My solution is to go into the restroom halfway through the flight and change into workout clothes. I then do a full hour of calisthenics, crunches, push-ups and lunges in the aisle of the plane. I’ll ask the stewards for a lot of those steamy washcloths, and then retreat to the restroom for a sponge bath. I’ll sleep like a baby for the rest of the flight.

I know, I know. The man does great things. But it’s still hilarious imagining trying to pull off a sponge bath in an airplane lavatory. Pity the person sitting next to him.

Disease Fighter Turns Plane Aisle Into a Gym

In its ongoing efforts to go green, Fairmont announced this week that its properties in California and Arizona will begin offering free parking to overnight hotel guests who drive hybrid vehicles. That includes:

Fairmont San Jose

Fairmont San Francisco

Fairmont Sonoma Mission Inn & Spa Resort

Fairmont Miramar Santa Monica

Fairmont Newport Beach

Fairmont Scottsdale Princess

We assume this applies even if you’ve rented a hybrid during your trip (not a bad way to offset the additional cost that comes with renting a premium vehicle). For hybrid drivers, this deal can amount to quite a savings - in San Francisco, for example, downtown hotel parking rates often climb higher than $30/night.

We like to follow smoking bans as they take effect around the world because they affect travelers in such significant ways. Smokers who are visiting a new city can find themselves navigating rules and regulations that don’t apply where they live, and non-smokers in new cities can find relief or irritation from public smoking depending on the local laws. Yesterday, a page one story in the Wall Street Journal contemplates the new smoking ban in Anchorage, Alaska and what the combination of severe cold and a sudden dearth of smoker-friendly venues will mean for those who want to light up in the nation’s northernmost state.

Smoking Ban Leaves Alaskans Out in the Cold

If you’re a smoker who is traveling, check out TravelPost.com’s Definitive Guide to Airport Smoking Lounges.

This was the lovely sight I woke up to this morning in Beaver Creek, Colorado. It’s snowing that fine kind of small-flake snow that looks as if it’s so light it will never make it to the ground.

Insider tip of the day: Carbs allegedly help ease the effects of altitude sickness. As I was chowing on a bowl of pasta last night with two doctors, they admitted that the tactic isn’t as reliable as, say, popping a pill for a headache. But the idea that carbohydrates can alleviate or prevent the symptoms of altitude sickness is hardly an old wives’ tale, either. The science behind the carb-packing idea goes like this: when you travel from sea level to altitudes of around 8,000 feet or more in a single day, your blood has less oxygen flowing through it. Once in your body, carbs help transport oxygen through your bloodstream. While it may not be a fix-all for everyone and certainly should not be relied upon if you’re climbing to extreme altitudes, going for the carbs on your first few days on the mountain is one of those tricks many snow fans rely upon to before they hit the mountain.

Speaking of which, I’m off to eat pancakes.