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State of Home Safety 2026: U.S. Earns a C Grade

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

April 3, 2026

ZipCheckup Releases "State of Home Safety 2026" Report: U.S. Earns a C Grade Across 41,344 ZIP Codes

First-of-its-kind annual assessment scores every residential ZIP code on 17 environmental risk categories using 49 federal data sources

WHAT: ZipCheckup has published the State of Home Safety 2026, an annual data report assessing residential environmental risk across 41,344 U.S. ZIP codes. The report draws on 49 federal and state data sources — including EPA, FEMA, CDC, USGS, NOAA, PHMSA, and Census Bureau — to score every ZIP code on 17 risk categories from water quality to wildfire exposure.

Key Findings

  • National Home Safety Score: 67/100 (Grade C). No state achieved an A grade. 20 states earned a B; 31 received a C.

  • 10,053 ZIP codes (24.3%) scored D or F — representing communities with significant documented environmental or infrastructure deficiencies.

  • 23,861 anomalies detected across 42,680 ZIP codes scanned. Anomaly types include 1,022 PFAS contamination clusters, 5,084 enforcement spikes, 3,512 rapid-decline zones, and 616 "silent danger" ZIP codes (elevated contaminants, zero enforcement).

  • 1,154 ZIP codes show accelerating infrastructure decay. National median water infrastructure age: 48 years. 17,030 ZIP codes have infrastructure older than 50 years.

  • Median hidden annual cost of environmental risk: $1,020 per household. The 90th percentile reaches $3,370. 1,158 ZIP codes classified as "critical" — facing the highest compound risk costs.

  • 2,466 ZIP codes scored 70+ on the lead exposure index, based on water lead levels, pre-1986 housing stock, service line data, and CDC blood lead surveillance.

  • 3,512 ZIP codes classified as high or very high wildfire risk. Additionally, 33,283 ZIP codes score 8-10 on the smoke risk index, indicating chronic particulate exposure.

State Rankings

Top 5 Safest States:

  1. Texas (82, B)
  2. Delaware (81, B)
  3. Mississippi (81, B)
  4. Nevada (81, B)
  5. Hawaii (79, B)

Bottom 5 States: 47. New Jersey (58, C) 48. North Dakota (56, C) 49. Montana (55, C) 50. Pennsylvania (55, C) 51. Wyoming (55, C)

Data & Methodology

The Home Safety Score is a weighted composite of 17 risk verticals. Each ZIP code receives a score from 0-100 based on normalized data across water quality, lead exposure, PFAS contamination, radon, flood risk, wildfire/smoke, earthquake, mold, CO/gas safety, infrastructure decay, air quality, Superfund proximity, school environmental health, nuclear proximity, bridge safety, energy costs, and respiratory risk.

Data is updated daily (violations, alerts, AQI), weekly (EPA ECHO, CCR reports), and monthly (Census, BLS, FEMA). Underlying datasets are open under CC BY 4.0 via GitHub, HuggingFace, and Kaggle.

Access the Report

Embed Code

<a href="https://zipcheckup.com/reports/state-of-home-safety-2026/">State of Home Safety 2026 — ZipCheckup</a>

About ZipCheckup

ZipCheckup is a free, open-data platform that translates complex government databases into actionable home safety reports for every U.S. ZIP code. The platform covers 273,000+ pages across 17 risk categories, with data from 49+ federal and state agencies. No registration, no paywall. All data is available under CC BY 4.0.

Media Contact

Artem Akulov, Founder [email protected] zipcheckup.com

All statistics in this release are derived from federal government data sources (EPA, FEMA, CDC, Census Bureau, and others) as processed by ZipCheckup's automated data pipeline. No figures are estimates or projections unless explicitly noted. Full methodology is documented in the report.