List of the most polluted cities in the world. The dirtiest and cleanest cities in Russia List of the dirtiest cities in the world

The medal of technological progress 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.

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, far exceeding the permissible concentration, has become commonplace. The sad thing is that this situation is only getting worse every year.

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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.

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9. Sumgait (Azerbaijan)

In Soviet times, this Azerbaijani city of almost 300,000 people was a very large industrial center: many chemical industries operated here, related to oil refining and the production of fertilizers. 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.

Recently, the city has been conducting environmental studies to restore it.

8. Chernobyl (Ukraine)

Many people remember the explosion of the 4th power unit of the 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 the cleanest air, which is not polluted by 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.

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6. Dzerzhinsk (Russia)

This city with a population of 300 thousand became the brainchild of the Cold War, so 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.

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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The world does not stand still and the number of people increases every year. The problem of producing food, clothing and other material goods is becoming increasingly acute: factories operate 24/7, more and more new inventions appear - and old ones are sent straight to landfill. Things get old, people buy something new, businesses continue to produce household appliances, cars, cigarettes and computers, dumping waste directly into the nearest body of water.

And the larger the city that grows up around the production center, the more people live and suffer from terrible pollution, which sooner or later leads to their death. Almost every metropolis in the world can be considered a dirty place, not very suitable for a good life. But there are also cities with such levels of pollution that scientists put them on a separate list. Here are 10 of the darkest places on the planet from an environmental point of view, where no one is recommended to live.

Addis Ababa

Ethiopia

Due to urbanization and population growth, the city of Addis Ababa is faced with a shortage of fresh water and severe unsanitary conditions. Groundwater is polluted by industrial and municipal waste. High levels of chromium have been found in the headwaters of rivers that have served as a source of drinking water for years.

Mumbai

India

Mumbai is the eighth most populous city in the world, with a whopping 12.7 million people living here - and that's just according to official data. The roads serve more than 70,0000 private vehicles a day, causing not only wild traffic jams, but also severe air pollution. The noise level is completely indescribable. and noise pollution. As well as, however, the percentage of nitrogen oxide in the air, which even leads to acid rain.

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 a 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 chemicals. 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.

Pollution not only damages our planet, but also has negative effects on people. Air pollution caused by burning fuels in factories, cars, airplanes and for electricity can cause serious health problems.

While more countries are looking for greener alternatives in manufacturing and energy, others still have a long way to go. We are in Joy-pup.com Are you horrified by the pictures you see of seemingly beautiful tourist countries, and are you seriously thinking about how you can help our planet?

The Indian government suffers a lot from sanitation problems, not to mention huge air pollution from coal burning and metal smelting.

The rivers have turned into swamps with islands of garbage, the roads are full of holes and have a poor drainage system, and inside the city you can often see a landfill. Everyone on the road is a king with their own rules of the road, including cows and packs of dogs.

Bribery is flourishing in the country, which clearly affects non-compliance with any norms and standards. Now, what damage do you think more than a billion people who do not follow cleanliness rules can cause to the planet?

Garbage in Vietnam is as much a part of everyday life as riding a moped because it can be thrown out in the middle of any street. River delta Mekong looks like sewer channels full of rubbish. People throw bags of garbage directly into the river, so you can see all types of waste in the water.

It is even shocking that in a restaurant they throw everything on the floor, be it a napkin, a cigarette butt or a chicken bone. The country's motto seems to be: someone else will clean it up.

Its proximity to Vietnam is just one of the factors that makes Cambodia one of the dirtiest countries in the world. Garbage is also a common element of the environment here.

You can often see houses surrounded by scattered plastic.

Just driving down one of the main highways that runs through the country will give you an idea of ​​why Cambodia will be on our list. The piles of trash on the side of the road stretch for hundreds of miles across the country. A truly sad sight.

It is called one of the dirtiest countries in the world due to a number of factors, and the most important of them are water and air pollution.

Contaminated water is a huge problem in China, with around 300 million people drinking it regularly. Because of this, almost 200 million people suffer from various diseases.

Air pollution in China as a result of breakneck economic growth has led to many diseases and premature deaths among the population.

Even dirtier than neighboring India, and we think this is the result of a combination of extreme poverty among the majority of the population and the colonial legacy.

Ironically, if you go into someone's house, it is usually very clean, but outside the house, people don't think about where to throw their trash. Bengalis have “urns” everywhere under their feet.

The lack of common garbage containers and deteriorating infrastructure have their consequences - incredibly dirty streets and dusty, cloudy air.

There is a river in Indonesia that is so polluted that you can't see the water! See a real picture of the Citarum River, which 5 million people rely on as their main source of drinking water. Efforts to clean up the river have yet to achieve even minimal success.

Another problem is waste dumping. Indonesia has stunningly beautiful rainforest, untouched and ancient, with amazing wildlife. But while you are driving, afraid to move, you will definitely find an illegal dump on the side of the road.

Diving is impressive with stunning reefs, huge turtles and colorful fish. But among them will be household waste dumped by the islanders into the sea.

Surrounded by such beauty, the landfills are even sadder than usual.

More precisely Cairo. Sometimes it is so dirty that there are other pyramids - pyramids of garbage.

Another “attraction” of Cairo is the settlement of Manshiyat Nasser or Garbage City. This is home to more than 260 thousand people who live among piles of rubbish without running water, sewerage or electricity!

Most of the town's residents are Egypt's garbage collectors, hauling it from nearby towns to Manshiyat Nasser and then sorting it, trying to find any potentially useful or recyclable items.

How about one of the most advanced countries in the world?

Not far from the famous Bondi Beach there is a large outlet that carries raw and untreated sewage into Sydney. Here you can see what looks like snow and many other things. It turns out that the stream pushes sewage directly onto the beach, the snow is toilet paper and human excrement fats.

Another pain point is the Parramatta River, which flows into Sydney Harbour. Factories located on the banks of the reservoir pump toxic waste directly into the river. The waste settles along the entire river bottom and causes poisoning of the river fauna.

Of course, Australia is difficult to compare with India and other countries on the list, but for tourists it is known as a developed country with fantastic beaches. Meanwhile, the government turns a blind eye to “little things” like waste in rivers.

The problem of pollution in Russian cities, which has become especially acute in recent years, is inextricably linked with the global process of urbanization. The population growth of medium and large cities and agglomerations leads to increased anthropogenic impact on the atmosphere, water bodies, soil cover and living organisms. In Russia, this process has been most active since the end of the first half of the twentieth century; During this time, radical changes took place in the economy, the most famous Soviet industrial giants appeared, on the basis of which new vast industrial areas were formed. The same period includes the active development of those cities and territories in which the most difficult environmental situation is currently observed.

All more or less significant cities, where manufacturing enterprises operate and a developed transport network, require increased attention from environmental specialists. But there are also places on the map that over the past decades have actually become an environmental disaster zone. This is indicated not only by an analysis of the state of the environment, but also by direct statistics of morbidity and mortality of residents forced to stay in contaminated areas and consume local products. Below are the dirtiest cities in Russia, selected on the basis of environmental monitoring data.

1. Norilsk

Polar Norilsk, with a population of more than 170 thousand people, is the dirtiest city in Russia, the undisputed leader in terms of emissions into the atmosphere. Every year, city enterprises emit about two million tons of toxic substances into the air, while their concentration in the air periodically becomes tens and even hundreds of times higher than the maximum permissible level. The main source of toxic emissions is the Norilsk Nickel mining and metallurgical plant.

The geographical and climatic features of Norilsk (the city is surrounded on three sides by mountains) do not allow emissions to dissipate, so many Norilsk residents periodically experience breathing problems. In general, Norilsk is characterized by extremely low life expectancy of people compared to the regional average, and its surroundings for many kilometers around are almost completely devoid of vegetation.

2. Dzerzhinsk

The list of the most polluted cities in Russia could not but include Dzerzhinsk - a satellite city of Nizhny Novgorod with a population of 230 thousand inhabitants, the center of the chemical industry. During the twentieth century, hundreds of tons of hydrocyanic acid, pesticides, cyanides and other highly toxic substances were buried and released into groundwater in Dzerzhinsk and its surroundings. In addition, during the Cold War, Dzerzhinsk was the most important place for the development of chemical weapons, traces of which - mustard gas and phosgene - still remain in the soil. A unique attraction of the city are chemical lakes with different colored waters and storage facilities for deadly poisons.

3. Magnitogorsk

Magnitogorsk is located in the Southern Urals, its population is about 420 thousand people. The city operates the Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works, one of the main ferrous metallurgy enterprises and a major source of harmful emissions. After the collapse of the USSR, measures were repeatedly taken to reduce the amount of emissions, but monitoring results indicate that the threat remains: the concentration of various impurities in the atmosphere of Magnitogorsk is several times higher than the maximum permissible values, which makes it one of the dirtiest Russian cities.

4. Cherepovets

Cherepovets in the Vologda region, with about 320 thousand inhabitants and which became a city back in 1777, is now known as one of the centers of ferrous metallurgy. According to official statistics in recent years, Cherepovets ranks second in the Russian Federation after Norilsk in terms of air pollution. The main source of “dirt” is the metallurgical plant. Chemical production, which has been rapidly developing in the city since the 1970s, also has an adverse effect on the environmental situation.

5. Asbestos

Asbest is a small town near Yekaterinburg with a population of less than 65 thousand people, located on the edge of a huge asbestos quarry, the largest in the Urals. Asbestos has been mined open-pit since the end of the nineteenth century, and its processing is also carried out here. In the vicinity of the deposit, including the city itself, the air is characterized by a high concentration of asbestos dust, which, as researchers established at the end of the last century, provokes the development of cancer. Despite this, quarry development continues to this day. Asbestos ranks in the middle of our list of the dirtiest cities in Russia.

6. Lipetsk

Lipetsk is a large city in Central Russia, the second most populous city in the Central Black Earth economic region after Voronezh (more than 500 thousand inhabitants). A major environmental problem of the city is the Novolipetsk Iron and Steel Works; in unfavorable winds, when regularly occurring emissions from the enterprise cover the center of Lipetsk, the concentration of hazardous impurities turns out to be several times higher than the permissible values. Additional load on the atmosphere is exerted by cement and machine tool factories. Over the past ten years, projects have been implemented to reduce pollution levels, allowing us to expect that in the near future the environmental situation will become close to the expected norm. Perhaps Lipetsk will leave the rankings of the most dangerous cities in Russia to live in.

7. Omsk

Omsk, with a population of 1.2 million people, is one of the largest cities in the Russian Federation. This is one of the main centers of oil refining, mechanical engineering, chemical and metallurgical industries in Siberia. The greatest growth of the urban economy occurred back in the 1940s - 50s, when many new enterprises arose and began to rapidly expand in Omsk, including the Omsk Oil Refinery and the Aircraft Manufacturing Plant (now the Polet aerospace enterprise).

In recent decades, when specialists became seriously concerned about ensuring environmental safety, technical renovation of production facilities began, the goal of which is to reduce the level of air pollution several times. However, the problem of chemical contamination of soil and water bodies remains far from being completely resolved. Another urgent task, typical for the south of Siberia, is the fight against drought and desertification of lands, which result in constant dustiness in the air and even large-scale dust storms.

8. Angarsk

Angarsk (more than 200 thousand inhabitants) is a young Siberian city, the construction of which began in the second half of the 1940s. Now it is a center of petrochemical production, one of the three cities in Siberia with the most polluted atmosphere. A particular threat is posed by the production facilities of the Angarsk Electrolysis Chemical Plant, where for decades (until the 1990s) installations for uranium enrichment and the production of uranium fluoride compounds operated; On the territory of the enterprise, along with the former workshops, abandoned and gradually collapsing radioactive waste storage facilities are being “disturbed”.

9. Novokuznetsk

The city of Novokuznetsk with a population of more than 550 thousand inhabitants is known as the center of the Kuznetsk coal basin (Kuzbass) and its own Novokuznetsk agglomeration with a total population of more than 1.3 million people. Facilities of the coal mining industry, metallurgy and a number of other industries are concentrated in the city; In total, there are more than forty enterprises in Novokuznetsk. At the same time, ensuring environmental safety remains at an insufficient level, which affects not only the atmosphere, but also soils and local water bodies. A big problem is related to the pollution of the Tom River in the Novokuznetsk region, which poses a threat to the quality of drinking water.

10. Moscow

Despite the absence of large hazardous industrial enterprises, Moscow is one of the dirtiest cities in Russia and the world. More than 90% of all harmful substances in the Moscow atmosphere originate from non-stationary sources, namely motor transport. When weather conditions do not allow gases to leave the city, the concentration of impurities can increase sharply, forming smog.

Over half a century, the number of cars in the city has increased 30-40 times. According to the traffic police, in 2017, about five million cars were registered in the capital of the Russian Federation, and taking into account the region’s vehicle fleet, it turns out to be more than 8 million in the Moscow region. These data indicate that ten Muscovites have an average of four cars. This number of vehicles annually provides the Moscow atmosphere with more than 1 million tons of exhaust gases, and this figure continues to increase every year.

Experts name the use of electric transport as a possible way to overcome the problem of transport pollution, suggesting that residents of the largest cities use it as an alternative means, but the appropriate infrastructure for its widespread use is still only being prepared.