From Bad to Worst

Green group catalogs world’s 10 worst pollution problems 1

The world's worst pollution problems kill millions of people each year and sicken hundreds of millions of others, mostly in developing countries, according to a new report from green group Blacksmith Institute. For the past few years, the group has ranked the world's top 10 most-polluted sites in order to focus global attention and fuel efforts to clean them up. This year, however, the group broke slightly with its own tradition and instead focused on the worst pollution problems. In no particular order, the world's top pollution problems include small-scale gold mining, contaminated surface water, contaminated groundwater, indoor air pollution, industrial mining, low-tech lead-battery recycling, metal smelting and processing, poor urban air quality, radioactive waste and uranium mines, and untreated sewage. "The global health burden from pollution is astonishing, and mainly affects women and children," said Richard Fuller, director of Blacksmith Institute. "The world community needs to wake up to this fact. Clean air, water, and soil are human rights."

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  1. Avelhingst Posted 1:40 am
    27 Oct 2008

    Poverty = Environmental Degredations?  Interesting.  Note how many of the above top ten pollution problems globally are either a) the result of poverty or b) poor governance.  Indoor air pollution? A problem in homes where most cooking is done over open fires day in and day out.  Low-tech lead battery recycling? Done by children eking out some sort of existence with their families on the very fringes of modern society.  Untreated sewage? The result of communities sprawling beyond capacity and who are either too poor or too poorly managed to take care of the problem.  The correlations continue, but time does not allow me to continue.  I will point out, too, that almost all of the top ten pose also serious human health hazards, especially difficult to deal with in an environment of urban and rural poverty and eroded confidence in the state.

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