The US based Blacksmith Institute issued the Top Ten of the world’s most severely polluted places. The 2007 list contains four new sites –two in India (Sukinda and Vapi), one in China (Tianying) and one in Azerbaijan (Sumgayit) – and six that carry over from the 2006 list, two in Russia (Dzerzhinsk and Norilsk), one in Zambia (Kabwe), Ukraine (Chernobyl), China (Linfen) and Peru (La Oroya).
The Top Ten list is based on scoring criteria of an international group of researchers from John Hopkins University, Harvard University, IIT Delhi, Mt. Sinai Hospital and other well known academic institutions. Also leaders of major international environmental remediation institutes –for instance Green Cross Switzerland, a charity that works to overcome the damage caused by industrial and military disasters- participated in the Blacksmith Institute report. The list is alphabetically by country because within the list sites are unranked. Ranking is not realistic or feasible… given the wide range of location sizes, populations and pollution dynamics, the report explains.
Mining, Cold War era legacy pollution and unregulated industrial production are the major culprits behind the pollution identified by the Blacksmith Institute. Among the new sites on the 2007 list, Tianying (China), a massive lead production base, is responsible for half of the country’s total output. Lead poisoning severely stagnates children’s intellectual development.
The report focused on places where pollution most severely impacts human health, especially the health of children. ‘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’, says Richard Fuller, founder and director of Blacksmith Institute. ‘This year there has been more focus on pollution in the media, but there has been little action in terms of new funding or programs. We all need to step up to the plate and get moving’.
Blacksmith Institute reported also the ‘Dirty 30’, a more comprehensive group of polluted locations around the world that includes the Top Ten. The majority of the Dirty 30 sites lie in Asia, with China, India and Russia having the greatest number. Toxic pollution in these sites has resulted from sources as diverse as massive industrial estates, large-scale mining and smelting operations and even Cold War era chemical weapons production.
‘All these sites in the Dirty 30 are very toxic and dangerous to human health’, says Hanrahan, Blacksmith’s Director for Global Operations. ‘Our database now includes over 400 polluted sites. We will update the report yearly. Getting the problem of extreme pollution on the ‘radar’ is a first step to taking action’.
