Heavy metal pollution of the Marilao-Meycauayan-Obando River system (MMORS), located in the province of Bulacan, Philippines, has caused environmental degradation and numerous public health problems.  The contamination of this waterway comes from both formal and informal industries, such as used lead acid battery recycling, gold and precious metals refining, jewelry making, and open dum... READ MORE

Haina, also known as Bajos de Haina, has been referred to as the 'Dominican Chernobyl'. A community near an abandoned lead-acid battery recycling smelter, nearly its entire population shows signs of lead poisoning. In 2000, the Dominican Secretary of Environment and Natural Resources identified Haina as a national hotspot of significant concern.

According... READ MORE

Manica is a district of Mozambique in the Manica Province with a population of 155,731 people.  Manica District borders with the Republic of Zimbabwe in the west, the District of Gondola in the east, the District of Barué to the north through the Pungué River, and the District of Sussundenga in the south, which is bounded by the Revué and the Zonué River... READ MORE

Cambodia is undergoing rapid development and subsequent population and industrial growth. Air quality is deteriorating as a result of industrial and handicraft processes as well as fossil fuel combustion.  As of 2004, air quality monitoring activities were inadequate as there was no established technical guideline.  While environmental conditions and human health are being threaten... READ MORE

In 1998, an international framework was established to improve air quality in Sub-Saharan Africa.  The first regional conference was organized by the World Bank on June 26th, 2001 in Dakar, Senegal, to discuss the issue of leaded gasoline as a major source of emissions in traffic-heavy towns and cities in developing countries.  The harmful health effects of lead exposure in childre... READ MORE

Kabwe, the second largest city in Zambia with a population of 300,000, is located about 130km north of the nation's capital, Lusaka. It is one of six towns situated around the "Copperbelt", once Zambia's thriving industrial base. In 1902, rich deposits of potentially dangerous lead were discovered in the mine and smelter located in the center of the town. Ore veins with lead concentrati... READ MORE

Kanpur is the ninth-largest city in India, and one of its most severely polluted. Its eastern districts feature about 350 industrial leather tanneries, many of which discharge untreated waste into local groundwater sources and the Ganges River. These pollutants include toxic levels of metal contaminants such as chromium, mercury, and arsenic. Chromium is the most worrisome of these: pop... READ MORE

For 30 years, the munitions facility at Zheleznogork created weapons-grade plutonium for the Soviet Union.  While in operation its factories discharged cooling water, contaminated with radioactive waste, directly into the Yenisei River.  Now a 300-kilometer stretch of the river is an environmental disaster area, with soil and sediment samples revealing radiation levels hundreds of ... READ MORE

There are twenty three tailing dumps and thirteen waste rock dumps scattered throughout Mailuu-Suu, home to a former Soviet-era uranium plant. From 1946-1968 the plant produced and processed more than 10,000 metric tons of uranium ore--products eventually used to create the Soviet Union's first atomic bomb.  What remains now are not atomic bombs, but 1.96 million cubic meters of radioac... READ MORE

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Bicchadi is a small town located roughly fifteen kilometers east of Udaipur of the Rajasthan region, India.  This site, which was a small industrial estate (791 acres) manufacturing dyes and... READ MORE

Muthia village lies on the eastern periphery of Ahmedabad City and borders a major industrial estate operated by the Naroda Gujarat Industrial Development Corporation(GIDC). Approximately 60,000 tons of sludge from effluent treatment plants and other untreated waste have been dumped along the boundary between the industrial estate and the village over the last decade. These hazardous wa... READ MORE

Krasnoufimsk is located in Sverdlovsk Oblast (Yekaterinburg) in the Central Urals. 82,000 tons of radioactive monazite concentrate have been stored here since the sixties. Exposure to monazite is linked to increased risk of cancer and is most dangerous when inhaled.

The main goal of the project was to raise awareness about the problem and lobby the government for a safe removal of... READ MORE

This project was initiated in late 2006 in dialogue between Blacksmith Institute and the Yunnan Environmental Protection Bureau. The key problem identified was the contamination of local water supplies, high in the headwaters of major river systems, by small abandoned metal mines and processing facilities. The local pollution problems are severe and, because heavy metals do not degrade in th... READ MORE

The village of Romanovka is located 50km from the Talakan uranium mine. Uranium concentrates are transported across the River Vitim by ferries and cargo boats.  Some of the mine's abandoned ditches, known to be radioactive, were for many years exposed to open air, and studies showed a correlation between air- and water-borne exposure to this uranium supply and a cancer cluster in the lo... READ MORE

Beginning in 1997, scientists were able to document the alarming fact that throughout the 1950s and ‘60s chemical weapons were dismantled, without proper environmental oversight, 10km northwest of the town of Leonidovka, in the Russian state of Penza Oblast.  The polluted area covers 65,800 acres of forest, where the plantlife, soil, and water all tested positive for arsenic, diox... READ MORE

One of the most infamous symbols of life-threatening pollution is the Chernobyl reactor, which suffered a meltdown in April 1986.  To this day, the settlements closest to the reactor site remain depopulated ghost towns; however, the explosion sent a radioactive cloud over most of Europe, and many regions received a fallout level that, while not quite serious enough to require permanent ... READ MORE