99% of scientists agree that the climate on Earth is changing at a tremendous speed, faster than they can analyze it. The remaining percentage of scientists are paid generous subsidies by oil producing and other industrial companies to cover up the shameful consequences of their activities. Carbon dioxide is just one of many causes of global climate change. A much more serious problem is methane - it is about 17 times more toxic than carbon dioxide.
As glaciers melt in the oceans, they release methane that has been locked away for millions of years in the form of frozen plants. If all of Greenland's 2.3 cubic kilometers of glaciers melted, global sea levels would rise by 7.2 meters and the world's 100 most populous cities would be completely underwater. It is not yet known how long it will take for the world's second largest ice sheet to melt, but the worst thing is that the largest glacier - Antarctica - has already begun to melt.
In recent years, huge amounts of hazardous waste have entered the Earth's atmosphere. Industry and fuel companies are destroying natural resources, cutting down forests and releasing deadly substances into the atmosphere. There are places on Earth that, it seems, nothing can help, only time.
10. Agbogbloshie, Ghana - electronic waste dump.
Most of the electronics we throw away will likely end up in a huge, constantly burning landfill in Ghana. The mercury levels here are horrifying, 45 times higher than what is allowed in the United States. More than 250 thousand Ghanaians live in conditions that are hazardous to health and life. This is especially true for those whose job it is to rummage through this landfill in search of metals that can be recycled.
9. Norilsk, Russia - mines and metallurgy.
Once there were camps for enemies of the people, and now it is the second largest city in the Arctic Circle. The first mines appeared here in the 1930s, when no one thought about the environment. It is home to the world's largest heavy metal smelting complex, which releases about two million tons of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere annually. Miners in Norilsk live ten years less than the world average. This is one of the most polluted places in Russia: even the snow tastes sulfur and is black in color. Sulfur dioxide emissions cause diseases such as lung cancer.
8. Niger Delta, Nigeria - oil spills.
About two million barrels of oil are pumped out of this zone every day. About 240 thousand barrels end up in the Niger Delta. From 1976 to 2001, about seven thousand cases of oil spills in the river were recorded here, and most of this oil was never collected. The spills caused significant air pollution, producing carcinogens such as polycyclic hydrocarbons. A 2013 study estimates that pollution caused by spills is having a huge impact on cereal crops, leading to a 24% increase in digestive disorders in children. Other consequences of the oil spill include cancer and infertility.
7. Matanza Riachuelo, Argentina - industrial pollution.
About 15 thousand companies dump toxic waste directly into the Matanza Riachuelo River, which flows through the Argentine capital Buenos Aires. The people who live there have almost no sources of clean drinking water. There is a high level of diseases associated with diarrhea, oncology and respiratory diseases, which reaches 60% among the 20 thousand people living on the banks of the river.
6. Hazaribagh, Bangladesh - leather production.
About 95% of registered tanneries in Bangladesh are located in Hazaribagh, a district in the capital Dhaka. They use outdated leather tanning methods that are prohibited in other countries, not to mention the fact that all these industries release about 22 thousand cubic liters of toxic chemicals into the largest river. Hexavalent chromium, which is found in these wastes, causes cancer. Residents must endure high rates of respiratory and skin diseases, as well as acid burns, nausea, dizziness and itching.
5. Citarum River Valley, Indonesia - industrial and domestic pollution.
Mercury levels in the river are more than a thousand times higher than US Environmental Protection Agency standards. Additional research revealed extremely high levels of toxic metals, including manganese, iron and aluminum. The capital of Indonesia, Jakarta, is a city with a population of 10 million people. The valley of the Chitarum River is covered with a large amount of various toxic waste - industrial and household, which is dumped directly into the waters of the river. Fortunately, the country's authorities have taken the initiative to clean up the river, which will be financed by a $500 million loan from the Asian Development Bank.
4. Dzerzhinsk, Russia - chemical production.
300 thousand tons of hazardous chemical waste were dumped in and around the city from 1930 to 1998. In 2007, Dzerzhinsk was included in the Guinness Book of Records as the most poisonous city on the planet. Water samples revealed levels of phenols and dioxins that were thousands of times higher than normal. These substances are directly linked to cancer and disabling diseases. In 2006, the average life expectancy for women here was 47 years, and for men - 42 years, with a population of 245 thousand people.
3. Chernobyl, Ukraine - accident at a nuclear power plant.
The accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant holds the title of the worst nuclear disaster in history. The radiation released from the accident was approximately one hundred times greater than that resulting from the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The outskirts of the city have been empty for more than 20 years. It is believed that about 4 thousand cases of thyroid cancer, as well as mutations in newborns, are caused by the consequences of the disaster.
2. Fukushima Daichi, Japan - accident at a nuclear power plant.
After a powerful earthquake, a 15-meter tsunami covered the cooling units and power supply of three Fukushima reactors, leading to a nuclear accident on March 11, 2011. More than 280,000 tons of chemical waste water are now held at the power plant, and another 100,000 tons of water are believed to be in the basements of four reactors in the turbine workshops. The accident liquidators tried to send robots there, but they melted when they got too close. People in this area are at risk of developing a wide range of cancers. According to the World Health Organization, it is the most polluted place in the world. There is a 70% higher risk of thyroid cancer among girls who were exposed to radiation as children, a 7% higher risk of thyroid cancer among boys, and a 6% higher risk of breast cancer among women.
1. Lake Karachay, Russia.
It is believed that Lake Karachay is the dirtiest place on Earth. It is located next to the Mayak production association, which produces nuclear weapons components, isotopes, and is involved in the storage and regeneration of spent nuclear fuel. This is the largest and one of the least efficient similar production facilities in Russia. It has been dumping waste into the river that flows into Lake Karachay since the 1950s. The location was kept secret until the mid-1990s. There were several nuclear accidents at the production site, and toxic waste ended up in the lake. Before the authorities recognized these facts, the number of cases of leukemia among the population of the Chelyabinsk region increased by 40%, birth defects by 25% and cancer by 20%. Exposure for one hour at a lake is enough to kill you.
Technological progress is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, many things that seemed incredible just a few years ago have become a reality for more and more people every day. On the other hand, in order to satisfy demand, industrial production and mining are growing exponentially, while in order to save money, they often do not pay any attention to the environment, literally destroying all living things around. Meet the ten dirtiest cities in the world, where China, India and Russia sadly lead.
10. Kabwe, Zambia
Rich deposits of lead were found near Zambia's second largest city, Kabwe, which is located 150 kilometers from the country's capital. For almost a hundred years, lead has been mined here at an accelerated pace, the waste from the production of which has been poisoning the soil, water and air for a century. Within a radius of ten kilometers from Kabwe, it is deadly to drink water or even breathe air. The lead content in the blood of local residents is 10 times higher than the norm.
9. Sumgayit, Azerbaijan
This city of 285 thousand suffers from the heavy legacy of its Soviet past. At one time it was one of the largest centers of the chemical industry, created by the willful decision of Stalin, with one stroke of the pen. About 120,000 tons of harmful toxic waste, mainly mercury, oil production waste and organic fertilizers, were released into the environment. Now most of the factories are closed, but so far no one is seriously engaged in cleaning water bodies from harmful substances and reclaiming the land. For now, the surrounding area of the city looks more like a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
8. Chernobyl, Ukraine
In 1986, the fourth power unit of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded, the radioactive cloud from which covered an area of more than 150 thousand square kilometers. Around the epicenter of the explosion, the authorities created an exclusion zone, from which all local residents were removed. Chernobyl literally became a ghost town in just a few days, where no one has lived for almost 30 years. In the usual sense, Chernobyl is a very ecologically clean place, people do not live here, there is no production, and the air is incredibly clean, except for the high level of radiation, with prolonged exposure to which people die from a lot of illnesses within several years.
7. Norilsk, Russia
The branch of ecological hell on earth is located beyond the Arctic Circle, where 180 thousand people live. Initially, Norilsk was a labor camp in which one of the world's largest metallurgical plants was built by prisoners, from whose pipes about 4 million tons of chemical compounds containing cadmium, copper, lead, nickel, arsenic and selenium are released into the air every year. In Norilsk, the smell of sulfur is constantly felt, black snow has not surprised anyone for a long time, and the content of copper and zinc in the air exceeds permissible standards several times. The mortality rate of local residents from respiratory diseases is several times higher than the average for Russia. There is not a single living tree within a radius of 48 kilometers from the smelting furnaces. By the way, this is a closed city; foreigners are prohibited from entering here.
6. Dzerzhinsk, Russia
This Russian city of 300,000 people, a legacy of the Cold War, received about 300,000 tons of deadly chemical compounds that were buried in the surrounding area from 1938 to 1998. The concentration of phenol and dioxides in the groundwater of Dzerzhinsk exceeds the norm by 17 million times. The city was even included in the Guinness Book of Records in 2003 as the dirtiest city in the world, where mortality exceeds birth rates by 260%.
5. La Oroya, Peru
The small Peruvian town of La Oroya, located in the foothills of the Andes, at the beginning of the last century became a center of metallurgy, where copper, lead and zinc have been mined at an accelerated pace for many decades, without paying any attention to the environment. The content of heavy metals in the blood of local residents exceeds the norm several times, and the child mortality rate is one of the highest in the world. The surroundings of the city are more reminiscent of a lunar landscape with bare, scorched earth, without grass, trees and bushes.
4. Vapi, India
India cannot boast of the same rate of economic growth as China, however, there are industrial centers here too, where ecology and nature conservation are an empty phrase, to which no one has been paying attention for a long time. The city of Vapi, with a population of 71 thousand people, was lucky, or rather unlucky, to find itself in the southern part of the 400-kilometer industrial zone, where all the waste from metallurgical plants and chemical factories ends up, flows and flies off. Here, the level of mercury in groundwater is 96 times higher than the norm, and the high content of heavy metals in the soil and air is literally destroying local residents.
3. Sukinda, India
Chromium is one of the most important metals needed for the smelting of stainless steel, and it is also actively used for tanning leather. There is only one bad thing: hexavalent chromium is a strong carcinogen that enters the body by air or through water. One of the world's largest open-pit chromium mines is located near the Indian city of Sukinda, where 60% of drinking water contains hexavalent chromium twice as high as the norm. Indian doctors have confirmed that in 84.75% of cases of illness among local residents, it is the increased content of chromium in the body that is to blame.
2. Tianying, China
The city of Tianying, located in northeastern China, is one of the largest metallurgical centers in the country, where approximately half of the country's lead is mined. The city is constantly shrouded in blue smoke, and at a distance of ten meters, even during the day, it is difficult to see anything. However, this is not the worst thing, due to disregard for the environment, the soil is literally saturated with lead, from where it enters the blood of children, destroying them from the inside, leading to dementia. Local residents are very irritable, lethargic, forgetful and suffer from memory loss due to the increased content of heavy metals in the body. Wheat grown near Tianying contains 24 times more lead than is allowed under Chinese law, which is considered one of the most liberal in the world regarding the level of harmful substances in products.
1. Linfen, China
The title of the dirtiest city in the world, unfortunately for local residents, goes to the center of the Chinese coal industry, Linfen. Here people get up and go to bed with coal dust on their skin, clothes and bedding. There is no point in hanging washed clothes outside to dry; after a few hours they turn black.
China still remains the leader in air pollution, and its cities are literally suffocated by smog.
Air pollution in Beijing has reached such high levels that Chinese authorities decided to cut local coal use by 30% in 2017.
Meanwhile, the United States ranks eighth in the ranking of countries with the lowest levels of air pollution. However, as experts note, the situation in the country may begin to change in the opposite direction.
The fact is that President Donald Trump has said that he intends to fulfill his campaign promises and revive the coal industry in the country, despite criticism from environmentalists and the growth of renewable energy in the country.
In the meantime, the situation has not changed, the World Economic Forum has compiled a ranking of countries that demonstrates how things are going in the United States, China and other countries in the field of air pollution.
The map below shows the countries with the highest and lowest levels of air pollution.
There are many ways to change air pollution levels, but the key indicator is called "PM 2.5" - one of the most dangerous types of air pollutants.
This pollutant is one of the most dangerous because it enters the lungs and can lead to serious health problems such as asthma and chronic lung disease.
When PM 2.5 levels exceed 35 micrograms per cubic meter of air, it can lead to serious health problems.
Pollutant levels in Chinese cities have reached over 500 micrograms per cubic meter.
However, if we talk about average values, then in Saudi Arabia, according to this indicator, the air is the most toxic in the world.
However, air pollution is one thing, and the death rate associated with air pollution is another.
For example, this is China. This country was not included in the top 10 countries in terms of average air pollution levels, in particular in terms of PM 2.5.
It is noted that Saudi Arabia took first place in this indicator thanks to the oil industry.
| Countries with the lowest air pollution-related death rates | Countries with the highest air pollution-related death rates | Number of deaths per 100 thousand people | |
| Sweden | 0,2 | Turkmenistan | 108 |
| Australia | 0,2 | Tajikistan | 89 |
| Brunei Darussalam | 0,3 | Uzbekistan | 85 |
| New Zealand | 0,3 | Egypt | 77 |
| Finland | 3 | China | 70 |
| Cameroon | 3 | Mongolia | 70 |
| Iceland | 4 | Kazakhstan | 69 |
| Norway | 6 | India | 68 |
| USA | 7 | Iraq | 68 |
| Spain | 7 | Saudi Arabia | 67 |
However, China has the fifth-highest air pollution-related death rate per capita. This is partly due to the high population density in the country.
Below is a map highlighting the countries with the highest and lowest air pollution-related death rates.
The United States currently has one of the lowest rates of air pollution-related deaths.
At the same time, experts note that decades of research confirm that global warming and climate change are real, and in addition, the rate of change is increasing as the level of emissions into the atmosphere increases.
When looking at carbon dioxide emissions per capita, the United States ranks eighth in the world.
And less developed countries, where there is no developed infrastructure and no developed industry, found themselves at the bottom of the ranking.
| Countries with the lowest CO2 emissions | Tons of CO2 per capita | Countries with the highest CO2 emissions | Tons of CO2 per capita |
| 0,06 | Qatar | 35,73 | |
| Ethiopia | 0,09 | Kuwait | 22,94 |
| Niger | 0,1 | Bahrain | 21,80 |
| Eritrea | 0,11 | UAE | 19,31 |
| Mozambique | 0,14 | Trinidad and Tobago | 17,15 |
| Tanzania | 0,2 | Luxembourg | 16,57 |
| Zambia | 0,2 | Saudi Arabia | 16,4 |
| Nepal | 0,21 | USA | 16,22 |
| Togo | 0,24 | Brunei Darussalam | 16,06 |
| Haiti | 0,26 | Australia | 15,81 |
The main reason why the United States showed such a result is that the level of electricity consumption per capita in the country is very high.
| Countries with the lowest electricity consumption levels | kWh per capita | Countries with the highest electricity consumption levels | kWh per capita |
| Haiti | 39 | Iceland | 53,896 |
| Niger | 52 | Norway | 23,001 |
| Eritrea | 63 | Bahrain | 19,224 |
| Ethiopia | 70 | Qatar | 16,736 |
| Benin | 97 | Canada | 15,544 |
| Tanzania | 100 | Kuwait | 15,333 |
| Democratic Republic of the Congo | 107 | Finland | 15,246 |
| Nepal | 140 | Luxembourg | 13,873 |
| Nigeria | 144 | Sweden | 13,840 |
| Togo | 155 | USA | 12,962 |
The medal of technological progress also has its downside. It allows people to enjoy things and opportunities unheard of in past centuries, but at the same time, to meet ever-increasing demand, humanity is forced to constantly increase the extraction of raw materials and industrial production. At the same time, everyone strives to make this production as cheap as possible, so concern for the environment is often forgotten, and dirty production destroys literally all living things around. It is therefore not surprising that most of the dirtiest cities are now in the world's manufacturing centers - China and India.
15. Agbogbloshie (Ghana)
This African city is so dirty that it is simply dangerous to live in it. Although such a picture was not always observed: in a matter of years, the ecology of this large Ghanaian city was hopelessly damaged after a landfill for electronic waste, the second largest in West Africa, was set up in its swampy semi-desert district. It is known that in addition to lead, electronics contain almost the entire periodic table, and not at all in the form of vitamins. Developed “civilized” countries of the world are happy to send millions of tons of toxic waste here, turning the life of the residents of Agbogblosha into a living hell.
14. Rudnaya Pristan (Russia)
This city is probably the dirtiest in Russia, and it is no coincidence that its 90,000 population are considered potentially poisoned. Everything in the area is contaminated with lead, cadmium and mercury compounds; they have penetrated the soil and groundwater, infecting flora and fauna. Therefore, city residents have no place to get clean water to drink or grow vegetables, since any crop can only be poisoned. The presence of toxic substances in the blood of local children, far exceeding the permissible concentration, has become commonplace. The sad thing is that this situation is only getting worse every year.
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13. Ranipet (India)
The area is home to a large leather industry involved in the dyeing and tanning of leather. Such production uses chromium compounds and other toxic substances, which, instead of proper disposal, are simply dumped in the area, polluting groundwater. As a result, both the land and water here become unusable. Local residents not only get sick from all this, but also die en masse. And local peasants, despite this, continue to cultivate the poisoned land, watering it with poisoned water and spreading the poison more and more.
12. Mailuu-Suu (Kyrgyzstan)
Not far from this Kyrgyz town there is a large burial site of radioactive waste, so the level of radiation everywhere in these places is off the charts. The choice of location for the radioactive dump was criminally irresponsible - landslides caused by earthquakes are common here, and heavy rains cause floods and mudslides. All this extracts radionuclides to the surface and quickly spreads throughout the surrounding area. As a result, local residents suffer from cancer in large numbers.
11. Haina (Dominican Republic)
This city is home to the production of car batteries, the waste from which is toxic lead compounds. In the area surrounding the enterprise, the amount of lead exceeds the norm by thousands of times. Hence the specific diseases among the local population: eye diseases, mental disorders, congenital deformities.
10. Kabwe (Zambia)
Kabwe is the second largest city in Zambia and is located 150 kilometers from its capital Lusaka. About a hundred years ago, lead deposits were discovered here, and since then they have been continuously mined, and the waste quietly poisons the local soil, water and air. As a result, within a radius of 10 km from the mines it is dangerous not only to drink local water, but also to simply breathe. And every resident of the area is “stuffed” with a 10-fold dose of lead.
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9. Sumgait (Azerbaijan)
In Soviet times, this Azerbaijani city of almost 300,000 people was a very large industrial center: many chemical industries operated here, related to oil refining and the production of fertilizers. However, after the collapse of the Union and the departure of Russian specialists, almost all the enterprises were abandoned, and there was no one to reclaim the land and clean up the dirt from the reservoirs.
Recently, the city has been conducting environmental studies to restore it.
8. Chernobyl (Ukraine)
Many people remember the explosion of the 4th power unit of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, which occurred on the eve of the May Day holidays in 1986. Then a cloud of radiation covered a huge territory, which even included the neighboring lands of Belarus and Russia. A large exclusion zone had to be created around the reactor, removing all residents from there. Within a few days, Chernobyl turned into a ghost town, in which no one has lived since then. Outwardly, it is now a corner of wild, untouched nature, with the cleanest air, which is not polluted by any production. Except for one invisible enemy - radiation. After all, if you stay here for a long time, you will inevitably get radioactive contamination and cancer.
7. Norilsk (Russia)
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The already difficult situation of Norilsk beyond the Arctic Circle was aggravated for its 180,000 inhabitants by the difficult environmental situation. There were once camps here, the prisoners of which built the world's largest metallurgical plant. Every year, from its many pipes, it began to emit millions of tons of various chemicals (lead, copper, cadmium, arsenic, selenium and nickel). In the Norilsk area, no one has been surprised by black snow for a long time; here, like in hell, it always smells of sulfur, and the content of zinc and copper in the atmosphere is also much higher than normal. It is not surprising that Norilsk residents die from respiratory diseases several times more often than residents of other cities in the country. Not a single living tree remained within fifty miles of the factory furnaces.
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6. Dzerzhinsk (Russia)
This city with a population of 300 thousand became the brainchild of the Cold War, so each of its residents received as an inheritance a ton of toxic waste buried near Dzerzhinsk in the period from 1938 to 1998. In groundwater here, the concentration of dioxins and phenol is 17 million times higher than normal. In 2003, this city was even included in the Guinness Book of Records as the dirtiest city in the world, in which the death rate far exceeds the birth rate.
5. La Oroya (Peru)
At the beginning of the last century, American industrialists turned the Peruvian town of La Oroya, located in the foothills of the Andes, into a metallurgical center, where lead, zinc, copper and other metals began to be smelted in large quantities. To reduce the cost of production, environmental issues were simply forgotten. As a result, all the formerly forested surrounding peaks became bald, the earth, air, and water were poisoned with lead, as were the inhabitants themselves, almost all of them suffering from one or another specific disease. All of them, including children, have almost as much lead in their blood as there is in a battery. But the worst thing happened later: when the Americans themselves were horrified by what they had done here and proposed a plan to improve production and land reclamation, involving the temporary closure of all enterprises, the local residents themselves opposed this, fearing being left without work and livelihoods.
4. Vapi (India)
India competes with China in terms of economic growth, so such “little things” as nature conservation and ecology are very often not taken seriously here. The city of Vapi, with a population of 70,000, is located in the southern part of a gigantic industrial zone, stretching for 400 km, generously releasing various exhausts and waste from countless chemical and metallurgical industries into the environment. Local groundwater contains almost 100 times more mercury than normal, and local residents have to breathe air generously flavored with heavy metals.
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3. Sukinda (India)
When smelting stainless steel, one of the most important additives is chromium; it is also used in leather tanning. But this metal is a strong carcinogen that enters the body with air or water. A large chromium deposit is being developed near the Indian city of Sukinda, so more than half of the groundwater sources contain a double dose of hexavalent chromium. Its detrimental effect on the health of local residents has already been noted by Indian doctors.
2. Tianying (China)
The city of Tianying, located in northeastern China, is home to one of the country's largest metallurgical centers, producing approximately half of all Chinese lead. The city is constantly shrouded in a bluish haze, and even during the day visibility here remains very weak. But the worst thing is that in pursuit of the speed of obtaining metal, the Chinese did not care about nature. As a result, the land and water here are saturated with lead, which is why local children are born deformed or weak-minded. Bread made from local wheat will probably seem a little heavy, because it will contain 24 times more of this heavy metal than liberal Chinese legislation allows.
1. Linfen (China)
The dirtiest city can be called Linfen - the center of coal mining in China. Its residents wake up and go to bed like real miners - with coal on their faces, clothes and bed linen. It is useless to wash the laundry - after drying it outside, it becomes just as black. In addition to carbon, the air here is rich in lead and other toxins. Therefore, local residents here suffer massively from serious illnesses and die in large numbers.
Back in the 17th century, Peter I issued a decree monitoring cleanliness in the capital city and proper punishment for polluting the streets. According to the document, it was forbidden to throw garbage onto the street; on the contrary, it prescribed full control over the cleanliness of streets and pavements, as well as the removal of garbage outside of Moscow. I wonder which cities today need such a decree? Let's look at the most polluted cities in the world.
This city has been a major leather center for a long time. Over the years, the scale of production has become larger, but the technology for tanning leather has not changed for more than a hundred years. There are about three hundred leather industries in Bangladesh, more than 90% of them are concentrated in Hazaribagh. The leather tanning methods used in production are not only outdated, but are also very negative for the surrounding atmosphere.
How does the dirtiest city in the world live? Every day, more than 20,000 liters of industrial waste, which contains high concentrations of chromium, are discharged into the local Buriganga River. The air element also suffers, receiving a huge portion of toxic substances during the combustion of waste soaked in reagents. The ecological situation in Hazaribagh is the most unfavorable; everything in the city is in critical condition: air, water, plants and animals. The meat of local birds and animals is extremely hazardous to health.
Increased concentrations of chromium in the air lead to local residents developing chronic respiratory diseases, as well as an increased risk of cancer. Currently, about 15 thousand people work in production, including women and children. They accept workers from an early age; upon reaching the age of eleven, children begin hard work. To process raw materials, a solution of hexavalent chromium is used in production; this is what has had such an impact on the environmental situation of Hazaribagh.
This Russian city is one of the largest centers of non-ferrous metallurgy. But this is not what brought glory to Norilsk; unfortunately, it is the dirtiest of all. Every year the air of Norilsk is “enriched” with huge amounts of copper, nickel oxide and sulfur dioxide. More than 2 million tons of harmful compounds are released into the atmosphere annually. Because of this, not only the air suffers, but also the soil and water. According to statistics, the local population lives 10 years less than the inhabitants of other cities.
In the modern world, all kinds of gadgets have become objects of mass use. It’s hard to imagine our life without them. But few people think about where a broken or outdated phone or microwave oven goes. But residents of Accra, the capital of Ghana, know this firsthand. There is an entire area in the city that houses electronic waste that flows from other countries to the largest landfill on the planet.
Ghana imports e-waste every year, mostly from Western Europe. The amount of waste entering the landfill is simply shocking - about 215 thousand tons per year, and this does not take into account our own waste, which reaches 130 thousand tons annually. Some of the waste is recycled by local enterprises that refurbish electrical appliances. But the part that is not suitable for recycling is burned, which became the reason for the pollution of the city.
Beijing is the most polluted city on the planet, this is exactly what representatives of the European Space Agency said. It was here that the highest levels of nitrogen dioxide in the atmosphere were recorded. In the capital, and in other cities, more than four hundred thousand people die every year due to unfavorable ecology.
There are simply a huge number of cars in Beijing, about 2.5 million in total. Automobile emissions are a major contributor to greenhouse gases, the country's second-largest greenhouse gas emissions after the United States.
More than a century ago, lead deposits were discovered in Kabwe, Zambia's second largest city. Since then, lead has been mined here, whose waste leads to poisoning of the soil and everything around. The city has become extremely toxic; it is dangerous not only to drink water, but even to breathe. And this applies to lands within a radius of several kilometers from the city. The level of lead in the blood of the local population is tens of times higher than the permissible limit.
This city has long been considered one of the worst in terms of air pollution. And all this is explained by the fact that in the quarter of the poor, zaballin, garbage is recycled. The quarter was even called the city of garbage, since here poor people have to collect, sort and prepare various waste for further processing with their own hands. All this looks extremely unsightly.
The first floors of Egyptian slum shacks are reserved for sorting and packaging waste; ordinary people live on the upper floors. The streets, staircases, even the roofs of the slums are buried under mountains of garbage, often already decomposed. It is customary to burn plastic directly on the streets; women and children do this, as well as sorting. Men are responsible for removal. Here, in the air poisoned by plastic, the poor cook, sell cakes and fruits, and generally live their lives to the fullest. East Cairo is awash in garbage, which has long been considered an environmental disaster zone.
The capital city is on the 9th line in the ranking of the most unfavorable cities in India from an environmental point of view, and in the world list New Delhi is not inferior to many industrial cities. Not surprising, because there are simply a huge number of cars polluting the air. Delhi is not inferior to megacities; there are more than 8 million cars in the city! Sewage, bypassing the treatment process, goes directly into the Jamna River. Among the poor people from slums, it is common practice to burn waste directly on the street. More than half the population lives in unsanitary conditions. Harvard Institute researchers estimate that two out of five local residents have lung disease.
In addition to the capital, India has similarly polluted cities. For example, industrial Lucknow ranks first in pollution, followed by Mumbai, and then Kolkata.
As you know, in the 86th year of the last century there was an explosion of the fourth power unit of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. More than 150,000 square kilometers were under the radioactive cloud. The epicenter of the explosion turned into an exclusion zone, and the local population was evacuated. Chernobyl was literally empty before our eyes, turning into a ghost town. No one has lived here for more than thirty years. In the common sense, Chernobyl is a completely favorable place, because there are no industries here now, people who leave waste behind, and cars do not pollute the air. But radiation cannot be seen or “touched”. But, nevertheless, the city remains one of the most dangerous for humans on the planet.
The town, located in the Chelyabinsk region, became famous for its copper processing plant. It is because of the waste from this production that Karabash is in such a deplorable state. At the end of the last century, the city was declared an environmental disaster zone. Now about 15 thousand people live here, each of whom greatly risks their health.
Vegetation is almost completely absent here, and the territory itself is more like landscapes often seen in science fiction films. Scorched earth, mountains of waste, cracked orange earth, equally strange and unreal reservoirs, acid rain. Products from the processing of lead, arsenic, sulfur and copper are in the air. In 2009, the city was removed from the list of the most polluted, this is due to the start of modernization of the plant.
The dirtiest cities in the world, photos of which look more like scenes from the worst horror films, are dangerous for the entire planet. The water cycle in nature, soil migration, and air currents carry toxic substances over vast areas in all directions, leaving no chance to isolate ourselves from this problem. Experts estimate that more than a billion people on Earth suffer from the harmful effects of toxins and hazardous chemicals. That is why the problem cannot be confined to one city; it must be solved promptly and on a global scale.