Biohazard Cleanup Near West Roseto Roseto, PA

Roseto is a borough in Northampton County, Pennsylvania, in the Slate Belt region of the Lehigh Valley.

The name Roseto means 'rose garden' in Italian, and the borough was named for Roseto Valfortore, the village in Apulia, Italy, from which most of its settlers came.

The first Italian immigrants from Roseto Valfortore arrived in 1882 to work in the local slate quarries, and Roseto was incorporated as a borough in 1912.

A 1974 study by folklorist Carla Bianco found that about 95 percent of Roseto's roughly 1,600 residents were still descendants of the original settlers from Roseto Valfortore.

Roseto is famous in sociology and cardiology for the 'Roseto effect': in the mid-20th century, its close-knit Italian American community had about half the national average rate of heart disease, a landmark finding that helped establish how stress and social cohesion affect heart health.

The Roseto effect reached a wide audience when Malcolm Gladwell featured the borough in his 2008 bestseller Outliers.

Roseto's population was 1,581 at the 2020 census, and it has been remarkably stable, staying between roughly 1,480 and 1,780 residents in every census since 1920.

At the 2000 census Roseto had 640 households, with an average household size of 2.58 people and about a third of households raising children under 18.

Roseto students attend the Bangor Area School District and go to Bangor Area High School in neighboring Bangor, while Faith Christian School is located within the borough itself.

The borough packs into just 0.63 square miles, and its deep Italian heritage shows in street names such as Garibaldi Avenue and in its Our Lady of Mount Carmel Roman Catholic Church.