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The most polluted country in the world. Environmental disaster: list of the dirtiest countries in the world. Ecological card of Russia

Ethics
19.06.2022

TOP 10 dirtiest countries in the world © Depositphotos

Activists and scholars have been drawing attention to environmental issues. And this is not at all accidental, because in the world a large number of countries are on the verge of environmental disaster. Editorial tochka.net I decided to find out which countries are the dirtiest in the world, and what led to this situation.

Greenpeace and software company AirVisual have compiled a ranking of countries with the most polluted air, which leads to the premature deaths of several million people a year. The list of countries with the most difficult environmental situation includes mainly countries in Asia and Africa.

The dirtiest countries in the world

👁 34.8k (168 per week) / 03/24/2017⏱️ 6 min.

Medal technical progress It 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.


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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, much higher than permissible concentration. The sad thing is that this situation is only getting worse every year.

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.

9. Sumgait (Azerbaijan)

IN Soviet times this Azerbaijani city of almost 300 thousand people was a very large industrial center: many chemical industries related to oil refining and the production of fertilizers operated here. 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.


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8. Chernobyl (Ukraine)

Many people remember the explosion of the 4th power unit 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 cleanest air, which does not pollute 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)

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.

6. Dzerzhinsk (Russia)

This city with a population of 300 thousand became the brainchild of “ cold war“, therefore, 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.


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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.

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.

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Do you complain about the poor environment in the country, do you think things can’t get worse? We hasten to dissuade you, the state of the environment in some countries is more critical. However, this does not bode well for us, because we all live on the same planet. Someone constantly compiles ratings of cities and states in terms of ecology and cleanliness. Most environmentally friendly clean countries always consider: Switzerland, Luxembourg, Norway, Latvia, Sweden, Austria, Italy, Costa Rica, Great Britain. World countries with bad environment much more, but let’s focus on the following ten, which often appear on lists of the dirtiest states.

The situation is especially acute because China's population is 1,349,585,838 people. On the one hand, all these lives are endangered by environmental pollution. On the other hand, such a large number of inhabitants causes gigantic volumes of consumption and waste.

And also a developing industry - heavy, mining, energy. The greatest threat is pollution atmospheric air. So, in major cities The incidence of lung cancer is 3 times higher than in rural areas.

This country ranks second in population - 1,220,800,359 people, some of the factors causing pollution are similar to China, and air pollution is also catastrophic. Experts have calculated that in 40 years, over 3 million people in the world will die per year due to “dirty” air, and most of these will be residents of China and India.

Despite the fact that the Republic of South Africa is the most economically developed country in Africa, it cannot boast of intensive development methods that are environmentally friendly.

Mexico's problem is water pollution. Reserves fresh water in the country are already limited, while untreated wastewater - industrial and sewage - ends up in rivers. The problem of deforestation is also relevant.

Tourists from all over the world go to this tropical paradise to have a good time and admire the amazing landscapes. Yes, this is true in the resort areas of Indonesia. However, other areas suffer from various types pollution, and the problem of waste disposal is ineffectively solved.

The modern government of Japan pays enough attention to protecting the environment, Japanese corporations are developing the best environmentally friendly technologies, but the population will continue to pay for the mistakes of the past for a long time, for example, for the rapid growth of industry after World War II, and the overexploitation of natural resources.

7 – Libya

In Libya, the tense environmental situation is caused not so much by industry as by the political situation and military actions.

A state in Southeast Asia - Kuwait - has 9% of the world's oil reserves. Hence the developed economy, the other side is environmental problems.

9 – Uzbekistan

There are many problems related to the environment in Uzbekistan. They are especially clearly demonstrated by the drying up of the Aral Sea, which is an environmental disaster.

10 – Iraq

Military operations in this country did not pass without a trace. From deterioration environmental situation The population of Iraq now suffers, and this is no more or less - 31,858,481 people.


A few days ago the capital India shrouded in impenetrable smog. The level of air pollution exceeded the norm by 70 times. This situation was provoked by weather conditions: high humidity, strong winds and fires around the city. Himself Delhi has long been recognized as an environmental disaster zone. What other cities are considered the most polluted in the world - further in the review.

1. Delhi (India)



Indian metropolis Delhi considered one of the most polluted cities in the world. Approximately half the population lives in unsanitary conditions. Exhaust gases from more than 8 million cars, drainage of sewage waste directly into the river without treatment, harmful industrial production - this is not the whole list of pollution that destroys the environment and provokes human diseases. By winter, the air in the city becomes almost unbearable. Poor people burn garbage to keep warm.

2. Linfen (China)



Live in Chinese city Linfen You wouldn’t wish it on your worst enemy, because it is the center of the country’s coal industry. The air contains high levels of lead, carbon and other chemical substances. People go outside wearing respiratory masks and drink only bottled water, because tap water tastes more like oil. Drying washed clothes outside is useless; the city is shrouded in smog, and it immediately turns black.

3. Dzerzhinsk (Russia)



In the period from 1938 to 1998. within the city Dzerzhinsk(Nizhny Novgorod region) and its surroundings, about 300,000 tons of chemical waste were buried. The concentration of phenol and dioxides in groundwater exceeds the permissible limit by an almost fantastic 17 million times. In 2003, Dzerzhinsk was included in the Guinness Book of Records as the dirtiest city on the planet. For more than a decade, the mortality rate there has exceeded the birth rate by 260 percent.

4. Hazaribagh, Bangladesh



In the city Hazaribagh about 90 percent of all leather goods production capacities are concentrated. A solution of hexavalent chromium is used to treat leather, which has a very detrimental effect on human health. Every day 22,000 liters of chrome are sent into the nearest river. In addition, the remaining skin is burned, which creates a special stench.

5. Cairo, Egypt



Despite its centuries-old history, Cairo is considered a very polluted city. There is even a whole area where people live and immediately sort garbage. The first floors of the houses are reserved for waste, and the living quarters are located directly above them. The streets are also littered with garbage. Some waste, such as plastic, is burned on site.

Fortunately, not all megacities reach a critical point and become environmental disaster zones. These are confirmation that all is not lost.

Canada: 557 million tons of CO 2 per year. The typical image of Canada is virgin forests, crystal clear lakes, mountains and rivers, nature and space. Despite this, Canada is among the top ten countries that emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. greatest number carbon dioxide. To change this situation, in October 2016, the Canadian government announced its intention to introduce an emissions tax. carbon dioxide.

South Korea: 592 million tons of CO 2 per year. Refugees from North Korea they say that life in the country of our southern neighbors is like a breath of fresh air. This metaphor may sound like a cruel irony: the air in South Korea is one of the most polluted in Asia, sometimes literally suffocating. Spring in Seoul is like being in the same room with a person who smokes 4 packs of cigarettes a day. South Korea has 50 coal plants (and more are planned), and Seoul is home to more than 10 million people, almost all of whom use cars. Unlike Canada, South Korea is not taking any measures that could improve the environmental situation.

Saudi Arabia: 601 million tons of CO 2 per year. According to WHO, the capital of Saudi Arabia, Riyadh, is one of the most polluted cities in the world, and even in Beijing, your lungs are not getting the same “periodic table” that poisons your breath in Riyadh. In this case, the problem of industrial waste is aggravated by difficult natural conditions, in particular, frequent and sometimes terrifying sandstorms. Environmental issues in Saudi Arabia are considered secondary, and, like South Korea, the state does not intend to reduce oil and gas production and processing industries.

Iran: 648 million tons of CO 2 per year. The city of Ahwaz in Iran, once the winter residence of the Persian kings, is today a major metallurgical center and one of the cities with the most polluted air in the world. For example, in Moscow the average annual concentration of PM10 (fine particles that are an important component of air pollution) is 33 μg/m 3 , and in Ahvaz sometimes reaches 372 μg/m 3 . But problems with carbon dioxide emissions, alas, are typical for the entire territory of Iran. In November 2016, all capital schools due to the deadly fumes choking the city. “Deadly” is not a figure of speech here: in 23 days, more than 400 people died from air pollution. In addition to petrochemical production, which significantly worsens the environment, an important reason for this situation in Iran is sanctions. For the past 38 years since the end of the Islamic Revolution, Iranians have been driving old cars with low-quality fuel.

Germany: 798 million tons of CO 2 per year. The presence of Germany on this list is as surprising as the presence of Canada. But don’t be deceived: in addition to green fields, a good economy and eco-orientation, Germany has a lot major cities. Thus, Stuttgart is called the “German Beijing” - there is no smog here, but the level of concentration of dangerous particles is quite high. In 2014, particle concentrations exceeded the permissible limit for 64 days, making the air dirtier than Seoul and Los Angeles combined. In 28 regions of the country, the level of air pollution is considered dangerous. In 2013, more than 10 thousand German residents died from high levels of nitrogen oxides in the air.

Japan: 1237 million tons of CO 2 per year. Japan ranks 5th in the world in terms of pollution, emitting almost twice as much carbon dioxide into the air as South Korea. But all this is a giant step forward compared to what was happening on the island state literally 50 years ago. Horrible syndromes caused by pollution, such as Minamata disease (heavy metal poisoning), killed many Japanese people. It wasn't until the 1970s that Japanese authorities began to take steps towards living in a cleaner environment. The environmental situation in Japan worsened slightly after the accident at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in 2011: the disaster led to the fact that almost all Japanese nuclear power plants were closed and replaced with coal ones.

Russia: 1617 million tons of CO 2 per year. Yes, Moscow sometimes exhibits particularly dangerous levels of air pollution, but Russia’s fourth position in the list of countries with the highest CO2 content in the air is still occupied by the Chelyabinsk region and the industrial cities of Siberia. Novokuznetsk, Angarsk, Omsk, Krasnoyarsk, Bratsk and Novosibirsk produce more emissions into the atmosphere than the multimillion-dollar city of Moscow. About 6% of all carbon monoxide emissions in Russia are due to Chelyabinsk region. The city of Karabash in the Chelyabinsk region was recognized as an environmental disaster zone in 1996, and in the media it is often called the most polluted city in the world.

India: 2274 million tons of CO 2 per year. According to some estimates, about 1.2 million people die every year from air pollution in India. Yes, India has announced its desire for cleaner energy, but how realistic this is is a big question. The country's economy is growing, yet hundreds of millions of Indians still lack electricity and live in squalid conditions. One of India's major economic achievements last years is to reduce the country’s dependence on coal imports: through the growth of its own coal production, which India is confidently increasing every year. If we stop this coal mining, the air will become cleaner, but the country will be poorer.

USA: 5414 million tons of CO 2 per year. Despite numerous environmental protection programs and developments in the field of green energy, the United States is still among the leaders in environmental pollution. According to a 2016 report by the American Lung Association, more than half of the country's population breathes air with extremely dangerous levels of pollution. It can be rephrased this way: 166 million Americans daily put themselves at risk of developing asthma, heart disease, and cancer due to the air they breathe. The most polluted cities are concentrated in sunny California.

China: 10,357 million tons of CO 2 per year. Japan, Russia, India and the USA occupy adjacent positions in this ranking, but even if these countries are combined into one, then in this case the amount of carbon dioxide emissions into the air will not be comparable to what is happening in China: if air pollution were Olympic sport, China became the leader in the medal standings. "Red," the highest, level of air pollution is not uncommon in many Chinese cities, as are reports of millions of residents being confined to their homes by toxic smog. The air situation in China is not getting better - just in December 2016, the concentration of fine suspended particles PM10 (we talked about them above) exceeded 800 μg/m3. For comparison: the safe average annual concentration of PM10 from the WHO point of view is 20 μg/m 3 .