  Black holes can be inserted in very rich astrophysical environments, such as
accretion disks. Although isolated black holes are simple objects in general
relativity, their accretion disks may significantly enrich the field
configurations of their surroundings. Alternative theories of gravity can lead
to novel black hole solutions, which can be represented by small deviations in
the metric due to an effective stress-energy tensor. Among the key aspects of
the interaction of black holes with their surroundings, stand tidal forces
phenomena. We study the tidal forces of spherically symmetric black holes in
the presence of effective matter fields, dubbed as dirty black holes. These
effective fields can generically represent usual or exotic matter associated to
a variety of gravity theories. We show that this dirtiness leads to
characteristic imprints in the tidal forces, which are absent in the case of a
black hole surrounded by vacuum. We apply our results to particular cases, such
as black holes coupled to linear and nonlinear electrodynamics theories and a
Schwarzschild black hole surrounded by a spherical shell.
