Worst Places on Earth Are Home to Millions
Rapidly industrialising India and China have claimed four of the top 10 most polluted places on the planet for the first time, according to a report by U.S. and European environmental groups
BROOKLIN, Canada - In 2006, Russia topped the list with the three sites in the top 10, but this year, two very large toxic sites affecting hundreds of thousands of people in India and China were included that had been missed in the previous global survey, said Richard Fuller, director of the New York- based Blacksmith Institute, a independent environmental group that released the list Sep. 12 report in partnership with Green Cross Switzerland.
“We were surprised these sites had not been reported before,” Fuller told IPS.
One is Tianjin in the Anhui Province of China, which produces about 50 percent of the country’s lead, often from low-level and illegal production facilities. A lack of environmental enforcement has resulted in severe lead poisoning, with soil and homes contaminated at levels 10 to 24 times China’s national standards.
Up to 140,000 people may be affected, suffering from brain damage and mental retardation.
“The Chinese government says it is one of the worst environmental sites in the country,” says David Hanrahan, Blacksmith’s director of global operations.
Another newly “discovered” toxic community is in India’s Sukinda Valley in the state of Orissa, home to 2.6 million people and one of the largest open cast chromite ore mines in the world. Twelve mines continue to operate without any environmental management plans. Over 30 million tonnes of waste rock are spread over the surrounding area and untreated water is discharged into the local river.
The ore is mined and refined for use in the many chrome-plated products enjoyed in North America and Europe, said Hanrahan.
Approximately 70 percent of the surface water and 60 percent of the drinking water contains hexavalent chromium at more than double national and international standards, and sometimes up to 20 times higher. In villages less than one kilometre from the sites, 24.47 percent of the inhabitants were found to be suffering from pollution-induced diseases.
“The fact of the matter is that children are sick and dying in these polluted places, and it’s not rocket science to fix them,” said Fuller.
The 10 sites in seven countries documented in the “World’s Worst Polluted Places 2007″ affect a total of 12 million people.
It’s easy and often cheap to clean up these sites, experts say. The Blacksmith Institute’s efforts are directed towards helping local groups find ways to address the problems. Most are old industrial sites that operated without any pollution controls and there was little attempt to clean them up before being abandoned.
Cleanup efforts that can take a decade or more appear too big, too costly and too complicated for local governments.
“There has been little action in terms of new funding or programmes. We all need to step up to the plate and get moving,” Fuller said.
Russian authorities continue to deny there are any health problems in Dzerzhinsk, a city of 300,000 people where chemical weapons like sarin, VX gas, Mustard gas, and phosgene were manufactured for 50 years. At least 300,000 tonnes of waste from their manufacture were disposed of in the groundwater.
Birth defects are very common and the average lifespan of residents has fallen to the low 40s in a city where chemical manufacturing is still the major employer.
“There’s been an absolutely frightening impact on people due to the huge amounts of toxics in the area,” said Hanrahan.
Dzerzhinsk and another Russian city Norilsk, site of the world’s largest metal smelting operations remain in the top 10 from last year.
The Top Ten list is based on scoring criteria devised by an international group of experts including researchers from Johns Hopkins University, Hunter College, Harvard University, IIT Delhi, University of Idaho, Mt. Sinai Hospital, and leaders of major international environmental remediation companies. Specialists from Green Cross Switzerland also participated in this year’s assessment.
The methodology for 2007 Top Ten list was refined “to place more weight on the scale and toxicity of the pollution and on the numbers of people at risk,” according to the report.
Another new feature of the 2007 report is the “Dirty 30″, a more comprehensive group of polluted locations around the globe that includes the Top Ten. The four sites from the 2006 Top Ten that do not appear in the 2007 list are: Haina, Dominican Republic; Ranipet, India; Mailuu-Suu, Kyrgyzstan; and Rudnaya Pristan, Russia. All remain in the larger list.
The majority of the Dirty 30 sites lie in Asia, with China, India and Russia having the greatest number.
More than 400 sites were surveyed for inclusion and this only represents perhaps one-third to two-thirds of all the major toxic areas in the world, estimates Fuller.
“We don’t have much information from Central Asia or Latin America,” he says.
However, the mining town of La Oroya in Peru remains on the list from last year. The site of a poly-metallic smelter owned by the Missouri-based Doe Run Corporation, the plant has been largely responsible for the dangerously high lead levels found in children’s blood.
The problem is well documented, but action to clean up and curtail this pollution has been delayed for the area’s 35,000 inhabitants, the report found.
“Governments and others don’t seem to realise that toxic pollution has a huge impact on their economies,” said Stephan Robinson of Green Cross Switzerland, an NGO that works to overcome damages caused by industrial and military disasters.
People who die prematurely or who are sick in their most productive years represent a significant economic loss to their countries, Robinson explained.
“A healthy environment and healthy citizens are key for any countries’ future,” he said.
The Ten “Killer Communities” for 2007, in alphabetical order by country, are: Sumgayit, Azerbaijan; Linfen, China; Tianjin, China; Sukinda, India; Vapi, India; La Oroya, Peru; Dzerzhinsk, Russia; Norilsk, Russia; Chernobyl, Ukraine; and Kabwe, Zambia.
© 2007 IPS-Inter Press Service
And I thought Los Angeles was polluted.
It is certainly nice to see no American cities are listed in the top ten. After driving tour buses cross county for twelve years from 1992 thru 2004, I always thought our major metro areas were in pretty bad shape in regards to polluted air.
For example, even with our mandated ‘clean’ air acts and some reduction of visible waste from coal fired power plants, when driving down from the mountains into LA, Pheonix, Vegas, San Diego, Phladelphia, etc, it’s difficult to see the city lights at night or the horizon in the morning from the dark gray smog banks.
I hope no one thinks that because we aren’t in the top ten that we don’t have very serious polution problems here. Then of course a lot of the pollution in our air is invisible, those many deadly poisons discharged into the atmosphere from burning coal, from chemical plants and from atomic waste at nuclear power plants, that are deemed to be acceptable limits by some of the government’s wizards. How much poison is acceptable for you, __ for anyone?
We all live downstream.
“The ore is mined and refined for use in the many chrome-plated products enjoyed in North America and Europe”
I wonder who the owners of these industries are?
I think for some of these owners, it is easy to deal with 3rd world bureacracy and corruption than deal with legalities here.
I don’t know who owns them, but the Royal Family of Great Britian may, they own most of the uranium mines in the world and they have a great deal of control over our politicians.
Rather ironic, that we ousted England’s King George in the 1770s. They don’t collect our taxes anymore, but they do get the gold by other means.
We aren’t all downstream, actually. We, in the U.S., are actually upstream, in the sense that the products WE consume are produced in far-away places where (usually) the polluted air and water can’t get back to near our homes where we can see it. This is not an accident.
Companies didn’t want to pay for pollution controls, just like they didn’t want to pay for health benefits, but they knew they would catch hell if they tried to spew toxic waste all over L.A. or Cleveland or whatever. So they moved our dirty work, and our pollution, overseas. It’s not ALL our dirt– the middle class WITHIN China and India, and in other first-world countries, is consuming some of the products– but a lot of it is our dirt.
Advantages for the global rich: Not only do they get more profits by avoiding obvious pollution controls and labor standards, but the environment for their first world consumers is cleaned up by not having any heavy industry here any more, such that first world populations can start to believe (incorrectly) that the environmental problem has been “fixed.” No, it’s just been moved, to where you can’t see it.
Heck, I would submit that a large fraction of our first world population has forgotten that products have to be manufactured at all– hence the ridiculous notion that you see printed sometimes that we are now in a “knowledge economy.” Hmmm, seems to me that they’re still selling stuff down at the big box store, not “knowledge,” and all the social and environmental problems associated with producing the stuff “dirt cheap” have been conveniently hidden from our view.
Kem Patrick,
“It is certainly nice to see no American cities are listed in the top ten.”
If you go to the blacksmithinstitute.org website you will find they are only concerned with developing nations. Hence no Western European or US cities were considered for inclusion. Whether or not any would have made the list based on pollution and health results is an answer I would love to have.
Just check how many transnational companies are present in these regions!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
That’s progress!?
I seem to remember from my childhood school days that “the meek shall inherit the Earth.” I don’t hear that said much these days. Today what I hear about are the rich and famous.
In the “3rd World” country I live in, if the gasoline, electricity, propane and other advances we take for granted were to become unavailable tomorrow, the most of the poorest countries would hardly notice it. Since the majority of the work is done using primitive methods involving hard, physical labor and most of the food comes from the same village or nearby village, these people would hardly notice it - except for those with TV’s and radios; but who needs those anyway with the way they have been abused and become practically useless?
These people wouldn’t take very long to adapt and life would go on pretty much as it has. My guess is that the only thing households would need are water purifiers. Cooking and health care are another questions that would need to be addressed, but the bottom line is that the “meek” would have the least to lose and their lives would continue pretty much uninterrupted while the wealthy nations would be brought to a virtual standstill.
I must admit that I would miss the Internet and books would be harder to come by, but that would bring back storytelling at night and other forms of creativity for recreation and leisure.
It wouldn’t be a Utopia but maybe there is a lot of truth to the words that “the meek shall inherit the Earth.”
One more thing,davelwhite, makes some good points about the pollution being “offshored,” but again, if all of this were to happen tomorrow: no more gasoline, petroleum, electicity, and liquified gas; if it were to suddenly end tomorrow, these poisoned places would have to deal with the enduring pollution in the soil and water. That is why I wrote “most” 3rd World countries. Many other areas which haven’t been so terribly polluted would barely notice the change in what we of the 1st World take for ganted.
As for the rest of the world, at least the environmental damage would stop and the healing would begin ittle by little.
With our accumulated knowledge of the world and science, green energy would be the only alternative, and the Industrial age as we are experiencing it today, would be discarded because it would not be able to work once these polluting transnationals would no longer be able to function.
I know it’s a dream, fantasy, or plain crazy thinking but wouldn’t it be nice?
WOW HYBRIDOMA, Great points. last night my wife and I were talking about the coming depression and what would possibly occur here in America.
We figure the electricity will soon be off, the supermarket shelves will empty in two days, little if any transportation or open gas stations, water supplies seriously disrupted, anarchy, with armed gangs of people killing for food. The millions of small farmers that were here in 1929 are gone. (Food will be scarce). It will be a total disaster, liken to Katrian, covering the entire country within two to three weeks or less and lasting for years.
Who will best survive? The very poor of Apalachia, some Mormons, some American Indians, some small church groups, some of those who live in far northern Maine, Alaska, and perhaps Hawaii, also many doctors and nurses and a few of the very rich, who have a large, secure estate and a small army to defend it.
Eventually there will be many seperate, small military factions roaming the country or defending their land areas. Sort of like some third world countries, or like the fictional Mad Max story. Poor Mexicans will soon pour across our southern borders and take back the land we “purchased” from them. In any event, The once mighty United States, will cease to exist.
Let us all hope and pray, the nuclear power plants will be safely shut down and secured, ____say long, serious prayers on that one.
davelwhite: good points right on the mark
When US corporations outsourced much of their manufacturing, and jobs along with the process, they outsourced pollution.
You may get your wish for a coming depression if a Democrat gets into the White House. Already with a Democrat Congress taxes are going up, social programs are increasing, etc.
Democrats have already driven so many jobs from the USA into the hands of other countries by the millions. As they enlarge BIG GOVERNMENT even BIGGER, something will eventually break.
http://wheresyourbrain.blogspot.com/
JustaDog September 13th, 2007 9:27 pm
“Already with a Democrat Congress taxes are going up, social programs are increasing, etc.”
You’re joking right? Democrats are just as crooked as Republicans. No Doubt. BUT! Social programs are why we have a government. Not to spend every penny of our taxes for the invasion and occupation of sovereign nations that are no threat to anyone. If we took 10% of the money that’s LOST by the pentagon and used it to take care of our own nation we might BEGIN to repair the damage that’s been done by All politicians for decades. We only have one political party in America. The Free Market Capitalist Party. They get to be the masters, we get to be the slaves.
God bless America?
Great analysis hybridonma. The point that we just don’t see the pollution of manufacturing is very accurate. It seems that many more cities would contend for a place on that infamous list if they were investigated. Two who come to mind are Manila, Philippines and Sao Paulo, Brazil. The curse of the automobile, and of burning waste of all sorts up into the air has made life very dangerous and short in these cities. We used to see greenish pools of smog hovering over the road in Manila and I asked the driver what it was. He knew what this meant: “bugers!” he stated and cringed dreadfully, and sure enough, as soon as the van descended into the green mist we all began coughing and retching. I don’t know the composition of the deadly gas, but it made your eyes water and your sinuses react violently. But the water is worse! Oh you can smell the stench of those dead brown rivers well before you cross over them! And it dawned on me that people actually live there in that polluted cesspool of a city! And eat the diseased tiny fish in those brown canals, who haven’t croaked yet. Watching the glove less poor children shake car batteries upside down on the side of the road to retrieve the lead plates is another sad testament to the poison of automobiles.
Are those chrome strips and metal engines so important that we should let people die for them? Makes you feel guilty just riding in the damn things. After living in L.A. most of my life, I only have 80% of my vital lung capacity left and I’m a non-smoker. If I had it to do over again, I would have escaped to Hawaii penniless and took my chances. They have the best air quality in the U.S. and on little islands, do you really need a car?
God, I hate automobiles! What a waste of money and resources.
So at this stage, to save our species, we need a real leader to address these grave problems as a national emergency. But we don’t have a thinking man in the white house right now. I think I now know why NeoCons are so treacherous in Government. They have spent their whole lives in a self-centered fantasy world believing in destructive materialism while at the same time preaching the “virtues” of absolving their sins via the belief in an all-knowing deity who forgives them of any transgression whatsoever. In other words, they can do no wrong that won’t be forgiven, so they do so whenever possible.
But their crimes against humanity committed by their bloody christian conquest of the world cannot go on forever. These people are so self-deluded all the time that no presentation of evidence that the globe is heating up seems to register with them. “Ignore it and it will go away” seems to be their motto.
I’m not sure any of them will address these crisis’s until their investment houses in Florida go underwater! And right now, that seems to be a runaway certainty in ten to thirty years. The good news is that the bible-thumping Bush Crime Family has property in Palm Beach, Florida, so unless they sell it, there will be a little poetic justice happening there.
pacplyer
“if you ask me, all religion is a mental disorder” - Comedian Bill Maher
Jesus Christ, I get so much shit on this site for always trying to point out what this article succinctly states. And while I haven’t been able to verbalize it quite so well, I just stumbled along on gut instinct. But everyone can plainly see it here. BIG BUSINESS are the real polluters. When Americans have said “no” to pollution, big business moves the pollution elsewhere and covers it up. Americans ask for fuel-efficiency and alternative fuel sources and we get only the minimum “public relations” solutions. If you thought that the whole Bush/Bin laden, Cheney/halliburton, and Condelisa Rice/Exxon relationships were alarming. Just imagine what it is elsewhere in the world. All the environmental cleanup in the world could be bankrolled by the very few who make all the zillions of dollars.
Zillionaires often make their zillions by selling
computers, which are full of poisonous chemicals and neurotoxic heavy metals, to people like us who use them to complain about all the toxic pollution other people are creating.
Humans, generally, have always been physical piggies and perceptual hypocrites. And industrialized humans who, like us, now use highly-toxic computers to complain about other peoples’ environmental pollution, are both toxic piggies and hypocrites, in combination.
Mindless industrialization may have bought us nothing but a pig in a poke. No honest person can deny that that’s a viable proposition.
But the problem of industrial human pigginess isn’t unique to Personal Greed Capitalism.
Socialist systems in E. European countries, while under USSR domination, not only polluted their local earth spaces just as mindlessly if not far worse than anything done in the political west, they also silenced all people-based environmental movements — until those [equally-mindless] systems finally fell.
When it comes to cognating the delicate life-support systems that sustain us humans, I’d submit that mindless industrialization and ignorance of Nature are the common denominators that have allowed humans to poison their biosphere; not necessarily one economic system more than another. And while the one remaining, common-earth enemy has now been narrowed by default to Global Greed Capitalism, the underlying problem remains generic human unconsciousness.
There’s no quick fix or strictly political solution to this more-basic human problem, though try to fix our mindlessness we must — at least as it applies to our knowledge of those natural systems that keep us alive as a species.
Story telling at night? Geeze! Think Blade Runner and heat. People everywhere. The air inside is filtered… the air outside makes you cough.
It is NOT the end of the world. Nor is it all going to hell (well …maybe) and let’s all live out of our gardens. Our world becomes dark science fiction in front of our eyes. Not back to the stone age and gardens. More like the filtered air indoors kind of science fiction.
Smoky air is everywhere,
Still we’ll breathe the toxic air.
Tainted water isn’t very fair,
but what else is there?
Isn’t it all clear,
the end isn’t near,
Something else has begun,
it just won’t be fun.
The end hasn’t come but something else… did. We make the world of our children into dark science fiction don’t we? It’s gonna get grim in twenty years… in forty years? It is hard to imagine the way our grandkids will be living in forty years.
Greenland ice cap in forty? Yeah sure. Humanity builds coal fired plants by the hundreds each year. More cars NOW! Etc.
But it all is happening too fast. What will we do when it is us who have to do it? Don’t think we will? Wait ten years and people will be screaming.
Since we don’t really have ten years to wait…once people start screaming about the environment…thye’ll never stop. Because it will always keep getting worse, year by year.
If this prospect isn’t science fiction and dark sci fi to boot, what is? No big finale. No end is near. Something else is near but not the end.
Tianjin is not in Anhui Province, which is far to the south. Tianjin is in Hebei Province, the province that surrounds Beijing.
The best way to avoid a dark future for our children in 20 years or our grandchildren in 40 years is NOT TO BREED THEM. Helps a little bit with the enviro problems being discussed, too….
How about a White Out Day where we buy nothing that is not produced within 50 miles of our home.
Consumers drive all markets…
A recession occurs when the GDP falls for two straight quarters. It’s not such a horrendous event. The GDP is based largely on consumer buying (feel free to correct this if it is incorrect). The layoffs continue, look at countrywide which is laying off several thousand. How will those laid off pay their bills? How will they buy anything beyond the bare necessities? Ask why countrywide made such iffy loans. Money. Money. Money. It’s all about Money.
It’s all about PROFITS. Quit shopping at WalMart to save pennies. Shop locally.
Think about who does not support Birth Control. Think about the poor women who can’t get what they need to prevent pregnancy. Think about the men who won’t consider the ramifications of no birth control. Think about the children born into poverty. Think. Think. Think. Think about the girls forced into slavery for sex. Think about the situation just occuring in Utah when a 14 year old was forced into marriage (so he can have sex with her).
ALOHA !!
JustaDog … Get a clue and go take a look at the Bush Fiscal Year Budget 2008. In it you will find a planned tax revenue increase that will go out to 2012 of 43% on “individuals”(via labor/excise taxes) and “retirees”(via benefits/excise) and just a 13% increase in corporations. Also in the 2008 Budget you will find over $450bil to Defense, the largest one line item for 2008. We spend more on Defense than all China and Russia combined! What have we gained? How have the American people benefited? How have the Iraqis benefited? Who really benefits in the “long run” in any of these Civil Wars we have engaged in? All our past enemies have exceeeded us in productivity and trade, especially the Communist countries of Vietnam, China and Russia.
What has been the common denominator of all our failures both domestically and geopolitically? THE TWO PARTY ARISTOCRACY … The Dems and the Reps! There is no difference between either political party. They are both controlled by BIG BANKS and elite families. All upcoming Presedential candidates on both sides are members of the CFR(Council On Foreign Relations)an elite club full of banking elites and their political cronies. I only know of Ron Paul who has not ever been a member of the CFR …
You get what you vote for … Soon Americans will learn there are no real “entitlements”! When you rob from those who are resposible and productive and give handout to those who are not in exchnage for a vote its called fraud! The biggest welfare recipients in the US have always been US Corporations! Where’s Halliburton gone to?
One place Halliburton is gone to is: They now control the atomic radiation reading sites in Europe. They monitor the ammount of radiation in the air and refuse to disclose what the readings are.
Another eight years of Bushites will suredly put America at the top of the list. Environmental legislations have been put out of service since Bush got his greedy hands on our laws and God forbid we get another the likes of him in the next 20 years. As it is, it will take years to readdress the damage he has caused in our watersheds alone.