Our second installment of places to avoid – to make a rather blatant understatement – in the world, because of pollution and frankly, inhospitable environments, rolls on with some of the more obvious destinations to make the infamous list. By that of course, we imply China, India and Russia. Together, these three nations commit some of the most egregious sins against nature and by consequence, resident populations that run well within the millions.
While knowledge is power and we all must do our part to improve the health of our planet, the sheer contamination of these places is so vast and dire that you feel rather powerless in the face of it.
Most people who have never been to the Philippines know full well that Metro Manila is rife with pollution. The urban municipality of Marilao is just north of the capital city and is replete with tannery waste, heavy metals, pesticides and solid waste. Unfortunately for 250,000 who depend on the Meycauayan River for water, the river is precisely where a lot of the toxic gunk winds up.
Not much is known outside of Zambia, or Africa for that matter, about the city of Kabwe. As a rich center of ore deposits, European mines and smelters in operation since the early 20th century have had disastrous effects on the more than 250,000 inhabitants. Although no longer functional, the legacy of Kabwe’s derelict heavy industrial complex is still very real, with abysmal concentrations of lead, cadmium, copper and zinc in the city’s soil.
Here’s all you need to know about how bad life is for citizens of Dzerzhinsk, Russia. Between 1930 and 1998 300,000 tons of chemical waste were discarded in the city. The average life expectancy is now 44.
The Soviet government made a fateful decision in 1935 to transform the Apsheron Peninsula, and the future location of Sumgayit, into a hub of heavy industry. With nary a concern for the environment, the present city of more than 350,000 has paid a steep price. The ubiquitous presence of raw sewage, chemical sludge, oil and heavy metals, built up over the decades, has made Sumgayit a total disaster zone.
Russia’s shameful record on the environmental front endures with the Kola Peninsula. Well over one million people suffer in the northwest Murmansk region, where dozens of moribund nuclear submarines and 250 nuclear reactors sit idle and contaminate the peninsula with fuel, radiation and radioactive waste.
The people of Ranipet, in the state of Tamil Nadu, have become experts on the harmful consequences of groundwater pollution from heavy metals. Tannery and chemical waste in particular, more than 1.5 million tons of it, threatens the health of more than 3.5 million people who live in close proximity to the vast metropolis of Chennai. The pervasive seepage of filthy contaminants has made agriculture in the region a dangerous endeavor.
In terms of potential people at risk, the Huai River region of China takes the cake. A staggering 165 million people are in the line of fire because the basin of 270,000 square km has become a cesspool and virtual toilet for all manner of agricultural, industrial and municipal pollutants. Anomalous mortality and cancer rates and the utter decimation of entire fish populations makes the Huai River area especially vulnerable. Floods in the wet season compound an already bleak situation. If left unchecked by the passive People’s Republic leadership, conditions in the region will approach apocalyptic levels in the near future.
Linfen, Shanxi Province, China
Linfen has become a poster child for China’s bloodthirsty quest for industrial supremacy. Simply put, with the exception of war-torn parts of the world, the Shanxi Province city of more than 4 million people is the most hazardous place on the planet. The Blacksmith Institute study on which this article is based ranked Linfen’s pollution levels as the worst of the worst. Inhabitants choke on coal dust, water diversion has decimated once fertile land and lead and arsenic contaminates more than half of the water left. Not to mention the carbon monoxide and toxic compounds that pollute the city on a daily basis.
With no government plans to change underway, despite mountains of evidence that residents continue to grapple with unprecedented rates of lung cancer, skin lesions, pneumonia and vascular disease, the situation in Linfen borders on hopeless.
A final note about this and Part I of our articles on the most polluted areas in the world. While in no particular order and by no means definitive and complete, in that a host of other locations, most notably in China, India and Russia could have made the list, the Blacksmith Institute’s landmark study did provide the backbone of research data.
Check out great hotel deals all over China, preferably in more tolerable areas than Shanxi Province.
Photo credits: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8
Responses to this Article
Leave a Reply