About the 2009 Report: World’s Worst Polluted Places

Comment: This is a great site to refer to and maybe help them out! Also, you can nominate a Polluted Site! Southside Virginia could be a future site if our state leaders allow uranium mining! Demand VA leaders to ban uranium mining!

While the disparities between developed and developing world are relatively stark in most cases, two initiatives with worldwide impact are highlighted here as models of how the international community can work together to make meaningful progress on pollution and health.


• Leaded Gas Phase-Out: a global effort by governments, multilateral agencies and the private sector to eliminate lead in gasoline that causes neurological damage.

• Chemical Weapons Convention: an international treaty to eliminate chemicals used as agents
of warfare.

These poisons represent a shared burden –a threat to the health and safety of the entire planet. Eliminating them represents a shared benefit.

The type of toxic exposures that are described in the following 10 examples are not global issues. Rather they are problems that plague developing countries by orders of magnitude greater than almost anything experienced today in developed ones –thus, our reason for focusing attention there.

These 10 programs, we consider to be examples of successful efforts in developing countries that are reducing the toll of pollution on human health:

• Accra, Ghana: the broad commercialization of innovative cooking stoves to reduce indoor air pollution that causes respiratory illnesses among women and children;

• Candelaria, Chile: comprehensive copper tailings disposal and water conservation treatment system;

• Chernobyl-affected areas, Eastern Europe: medical, psychological and educational interventions to improve the lives and livelihoods of those living in the zone of radiation contamination;

• Delhi, India: broad-based public policies to reduce the vehicle emissions that cause urban air pollution responsible for respiratory illnesses;

• Haina, Dominican Republic: removal of soil contaminated by the improper recycling of used car batteries to reduce lead levels in children’s blood;

• Kalimantan, Indonesia: new techniques to reduce mercury poisoning from artisanal gold mining;

• Old Korogwe, Tanzania: removal of a stockpile of pesticides responsible for contaminating soil and a nearby river, poisoning the local residents;

• Rudnaya Pristan Region, Russia: removal of lead-contaminated soil in children’s playgrounds in order to lower blood lead levels in children;

• Shanghai, China: 12-year program to clean up sewage in an urban waterway that supplies drinking water to millions;

• West Bengal, India: reduction in arsenic poisoning through removal of naturally occurring arsenic in well water.

This report aspires to benchmark the beginning of the end of the toxic legacy devastating the health of millions of people in developing countries. These examples are not a definitive or exclusive list, but rather guidance for the possibilities of the impact of this work on a global scale.

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