Pollution Killing Kids in China, India
Global environment watchdog blames unregulated factories, mining as major health threat to children
NEW YORK - Poisonous industrial sites in India, China and the former Soviet Union top a new ranking of the world’s most polluted places, where millions of people are threatened by toxic chemicals, an environment watchdog says.
The lead production base of Tianying, eastern China, and the industrial town of Vapi, India, were among new additions to the Top 10 list of “worst polluted places” by the Blacksmith Institute in New York and the environmental cleanup group Green Cross Switzerland.
“Mining, Cold War-era legacy pollution and unregulated industrial production are the major culprits behind the pollution identified by the Blacksmith Institute report,” the group said in a statement.
Vapi “exemplifies a region overwhelmed by industrial estates - more than 50 poison the local soils and groundwater with pesticides, PCBs (carcinogenic chemicals), chromium, mercury, lead and cadmium.”
The study ranked places based on the scale of the pollution and the number of people at risk.
“Children are sick and dying in these polluted places, and it’s not rocket science to fix them,” the institute’s director Richard Fuller said in the statement.
Also new since last year in the polluted Top 10 is Sumgayit, Azerbaijan - “a former Soviet industrial base polluting the area with industrial chemicals and heavy metals,” the report said.
“Cancer rates in Sumgayit are 22 to 51 per cent higher than the national average; genetic mutations and birth defects are commonplace.”
Chernobyl, site of a devastating nuclear reactor explosion in Ukraine in 1986, is listed ninth.
Some 12 million people were affected in these top 10 places, according to the report. The institute highlights the health threats to children from industrial pollution, such as the stunting effect of lead poisoning on intellectual development.
Places on the Top 10 list are not ranked relative to one another for more or less severe pollution.
The institute also compiled a “dirty 30″ list of other places it described as “very toxic and dangerous to human health,” including sites in Kyrgyzstan and the Dominican Republic.
The only North American city on the institute’s Dirty 30 list was Mexico City.
I am, sadly, not surprised that no one has posted on this article. I’m afraid politics on this site trumps everything else, and China and India are just on no ones radar.
I hope that some of the cleanup technology developed by the west will be made available to the countries in question.
some other countries, including germany, have cradle to death recycling legislation to cover all appliances and byproducts of technology. it costs more in the short term, but when broader health and environmental costs are taken into account, as well as real costs of raw material extraction, AND the many jobs created by mandatory reclamation laws, this kind of zero tolerance for “trash” wins hands down.
i’m a green, i recycle everything that passes my hands at home and at work, i buy organic, but being an american i am still part of the problem. what happened to the goddamn electric car? we have a long way to go. i am absolutely AGAINST outsourcing of ANYTHING - be it labor, agricultural production, waste, war etc.
everything we do should be kept right under our noses so that the stink might encourage us to CHANGE and wake the f**k up.
The “stink” is right under the noses of many millions of Americans. And in 2002, Bush slammed the door on Super Fund clean ups by totally eliminating the funds just after I had gotten the EPA to examine the ongoing poisoning of a community of working poor. I was a child on a farm next to what turned out to be a toxic waste dump. As a mother, I discovered a few years too late that lead paint dust had poisoned my family. One son is autistic with seizures costing our government, state and federal, over $100,000 each year and rising. Rampant capitalism will be our doom unless We the People take back our government and demand criminal environmental abuses be halted and those responsible for poisoning people and all life to clean their messes up. If this bankrupts the criminals, so much the better. We need responsible, moral businesses only. Then we need to demand this be applied to all trade agreements. That is how you expand true democracy. Protect the interests and safety of all the people.
amen, urthsong
what you relate about your son is tragic
i work with special needs kids, the more severe end of the spectrum. we’ve seen a 300% rise in rates of autism (and childhood asthma too) since ronald reagan took office 25 years ago
i attribute some of this to rising EMF exposures, in addition to the normal suspects such as Iraq war vets’ exposure to DU (they’ve got a 4x greater likelihood of fathering a child with autism). too bad the bastards who wrote the homeland security authorization gutted pending class action lawsuits RE mercury preservatives in MMR shots and their causation of a large percentage of autism cases (normal development until they got the shots). this all to save the “patriots” running the pharmaceuticals. then there is all the denial at the Pentagon in order to save the VA budget from having to take responsibility for the damage of DU to the Vets. it’s despicable
all the best to you and your family
Nobody reading this would be alive to read it if her death could have enhanced the bottom line of any Multi-National Corporation.
If we are not yet on the front lines it’s because our turn has not yet come.
It will
Sorry if I sounded ungrateful Daddy Warbucks. Thanks for my i pod
Eureka. What a revelation.
Surely it shouldn’t take a scoop such as this , to expose and lay bare for Western censure - something that millions of Western backpackers were acutely aware of . ( Having themselves been forced to wallow in horrifically unsanitary conditions -yet living ,in most cases, to tell the tale.)
For as long as one can remember ,pollution and scandalously unsanitary conditions have been as much part and parcel of the Indian landscape as the air we breathe , the water we drink and the food we eat.Countless millions - including ‘the kids’ and the old and infirm - have had their very existences blighted by its ills.
Ah but then one forgets : this is ‘be good to the natives ‘ day.
One is therefore truly grateful for such small mercies -thrown our way like scraps off the High Table.
“what happened to the goddamn electric car?”
I think the Big Oil Boys killed it.
“I’m afraid politics on this site trumps everything else, and China and India are just on no ones radar.”
I think it’s that a lot of people just don’t know what to say or don’t feel they have any expertise in topics like these that are science-related. I’m often tongue-ties myself when it comes to environmental issues.
I have a question. I remember reading somewhere a while ago that there was some sort of organism being created that would devour all trash and biological waste. Was I just imagining things?
Can the planet just heal and cleanse itself of pollution if we just stop polluting, or as with global warming, do we need something more drastic than merely restraining consumption?
iwarrior,
A friend of mine, a professor at Michigan, has helped develop ways that plants can leech certain heavy metals out of the ground. Things like this should be funded and supported.
By the way, I always admired your posts as thoughtful and on target, even if I didn’t always agree with them. I wish more posters on this forum could be as civil. Thank You