Rotting Apple! It’s NYC’s stinkiest summer in years with complaints soaring — and here’s why

What the smell?

It’s the Big Apple’s stinkiest summer in years thanks to three heat waves — as simmering street trash and repulsive odors are prompting a flood of complaints to the city’s non-emergency line, according to data and an expert.

There have been more 311 calls about smells since May 1 — a total of 3,756 — than any other year since 2010, with the exception of 2022, when the city relaxed street cleaning rules du🐓e t��o the pandemic, .

By contrast, New Yorkers logged꧅ 3,619 odor complaints during the same time period last year.

Grossed-out Manhattan commuters called it an assault on th♑e schnoz.

“It ju♔st hits you in the face, makes you want to throw up,”  fumed retail worker Marisol Go✨mez, 28, who said parts of Midtown are more putrid than usual this year.

“Sometimes I wonder if there are dead rats around … Or are they not cleaning the area as often as they should,” she told The Post. “It’s already stinky, but those days when it’s really hot and humid, it’s nasty.”

Meteorologist Steven DiMartino of Freehold, New Jersey, said the city’s recent high humidity and temperatures — like the swampy, 90-plus-degree stretch earlier this month —ꦇ can make smells linger longer and spread farther than usual.

“Temperatures have been above normal, but what has been really record-breaking and impressive has been th🌱e humidity, and that’s the key,” , which was first to report the soaring odor complaint data.

High levels of water vapor from the humidit𒉰y diffuse odor molecules, making the air soupy and helping rotting food d𓂃issolve from solids into pungent gas.

“The other week, where it 🍌literally felt like we were walking out into a sauna, that’s optimal conditions,” said DiMartino.

A garbage truck that might normally send 🅷a putrid whiff acro🐼ss a single block can now blast several blocks with a foul scent that stays around longer, he said.

Heat waves also cause a so-called temperature inversion — a perfect environment for bacterial growth — which DiMartino likens to a warm locker room with a laundry hamper full of ꦕhot, steaming sports jerseys.

“After a long day of practice, you ♏throw your uniforms in the hamper, close the lid and just let it sweat,” he said. “Now when you open up the hamper, i.e., the garbage truck, that stink is really able to grow.”

New Yorkers may be smelling high-growth bacteria in garbage being trapped at street level by a humid heat wave, he꧟ said.

While there’s no specific 311 complaint category for “garbage smell,” categories include everything from  “pigeon odor” to “sewer odor” to fumes from “nail salons” and “food vendors.”

Manhattan wꦍas the stinkiest borough, logging 33% of odor complaints since May 1, followed by Brooklyn and Queens which both racked up 23.8% percent of the calls. A total of 10.3% of complaints came fꦕrom the Bronx, and 4.6% were in Staten Island.

Manhattan residents were quick to offer their two s🍨cents about the hot garbage summer.

“It is t🀅he most disgusting cocktail of all the worst smells I can think of,”  Ollie Robinson, a marketing manager fr🍌om Hell’s Kitchen, tweeted. “The garbage is in there but so is a little bit of sewage, possibly some throw-up. It is bad and it is strong.”

Others compared the city to a big, musty sauna💃. 

“When it gets hot to where it gets humid, it’s worse. Humidity 🌠creates funk,” said Robert, 62, who works at a law fir𒉰m.

Despite thousands of complaints, a spokesman for the Department of Sanitation told The Post there’s a🐻ctually less trash on the streetও this year compared to past summers.

“The fact is, the ‘hot garbage smell’ is actually far, far less prevalent today than it has been in the past, thanks to our containerization programs,” said NYC Department of Sanitation spokesman Joshua Goodman.

“New Yorkers set 44 million pounds of trash out each day, and historically, it all went right on the curb. We have changed that, with 70% covered by containerization requirements as of this fall.”