The World's Most Polluted Cities
February 18th 2008 02:47
In September 2007 the Blacksmith Institute, an organisation which monitors pollution in the developing world, devised a comprehensive list of the most polluted cities in the world.
Countries still heavily reliant on fossil fuels, such as China and India, are the major reason for the phenomenon of Climate Change. The cost of developing the technologies that we in the west are working towards – clean coal, carbon catchments and renewable energy sources – are very expensive and in countries like China, India and Peru there is little being done to move towards these technologies.
Excessively high levels of CO2 and a lack of governmental regulation of business practices, directly affects the quality of life - not only of the planet as a whole - but of tens of millions of innocent people each and every day.
Linfen, China currently holds the crown as the worlds most polluted city with Time Magazine estimating that nearly 3,000,000 people are directly affected by air pollution –from industry and cars - in this inland city. Linfen is in the Chinese province of Shanxi where 25% of the entire nation’s coal is produced.
The lead mining city of Tianying, also in China, comes in a distant second with 140,000 people directly affected by the city’s production of lead and other metals. Out dated technologies and practices mean that a lot of the toxins from the city’s metal production end up destroying residents drinking water and farming soil.
In Sukinda, India steel production is the major driver of the regions economy. Journalist Bryan Walsh visited the city in 2007 and states, ‘60% of the drinking water contains hexavalent chromium at levels more than double international standards. An Indian health group estimated that 84.75% of deaths in the mining areas — where regulations are nonexistent —are due to chromite-related diseases.’ Sukinda is the world’s third most polluted city.
These are just three of the ten cities. The complete list can be viewed at the link above. The story is much the same in all of the ten cities. Nation’s putting economic growth at a higher priority than the well-being of its citizens. It can be argued that China and India especially, are better of because of the huge economic growth that both countries have been experiencing over the last 15 years but in reality it is only a small portion of the people in these two countries that are seeing the benefits of these record levels of economic growth.
Life expectancy in places like Linfen, China are estimated at ten years below national averages. Both India and China respectively have over 200,000,000 people living on less than a dollar a day and it is only business and government which are truly benefiting from the record levels of growth that these two nations are experiencing.
In 2006 the World Health Organisation citied ‘80 percent of all the world’s diseases are wholly or partially attributable to environmental factors’ and this is no surprise when the majority of the world’s population live in countries, run by governments, that don’t give a damn about anything except power and wealth.
Countries still heavily reliant on fossil fuels, such as China and India, are the major reason for the phenomenon of Climate Change. The cost of developing the technologies that we in the west are working towards – clean coal, carbon catchments and renewable energy sources – are very expensive and in countries like China, India and Peru there is little being done to move towards these technologies.
Excessively high levels of CO2 and a lack of governmental regulation of business practices, directly affects the quality of life - not only of the planet as a whole - but of tens of millions of innocent people each and every day.
Linfen, China currently holds the crown as the worlds most polluted city with Time Magazine estimating that nearly 3,000,000 people are directly affected by air pollution –from industry and cars - in this inland city. Linfen is in the Chinese province of Shanxi where 25% of the entire nation’s coal is produced.
The lead mining city of Tianying, also in China, comes in a distant second with 140,000 people directly affected by the city’s production of lead and other metals. Out dated technologies and practices mean that a lot of the toxins from the city’s metal production end up destroying residents drinking water and farming soil.
In Sukinda, India steel production is the major driver of the regions economy. Journalist Bryan Walsh visited the city in 2007 and states, ‘60% of the drinking water contains hexavalent chromium at levels more than double international standards. An Indian health group estimated that 84.75% of deaths in the mining areas — where regulations are nonexistent —are due to chromite-related diseases.’ Sukinda is the world’s third most polluted city.
These are just three of the ten cities. The complete list can be viewed at the link above. The story is much the same in all of the ten cities. Nation’s putting economic growth at a higher priority than the well-being of its citizens. It can be argued that China and India especially, are better of because of the huge economic growth that both countries have been experiencing over the last 15 years but in reality it is only a small portion of the people in these two countries that are seeing the benefits of these record levels of economic growth.
coal sludge
Life expectancy in places like Linfen, China are estimated at ten years below national averages. Both India and China respectively have over 200,000,000 people living on less than a dollar a day and it is only business and government which are truly benefiting from the record levels of growth that these two nations are experiencing.
In 2006 the World Health Organisation citied ‘80 percent of all the world’s diseases are wholly or partially attributable to environmental factors’ and this is no surprise when the majority of the world’s population live in countries, run by governments, that don’t give a damn about anything except power and wealth.
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