Cleaning up the Most Toxic Pollution in the World

Hugh Pickens writes "Blacksmith Institute has published their list of the most polluted sites in the world compiled by comparing the toxicity of the contamination, the likelihood of it getting into humans and the number of people affected. For example, ninety-nine percent of the children living in and around the poly-metallic smelter at La Oroya in Peru, owned by the Missouri-based Doe Run Corporation, have blood lead levels that exceed acceptable limits. Scientific American says that despite the massive pollution, it would be relatively cheap and easy to clean up the most dangerous hazards. For $15,000, the radioactive contaminated soil from the Mayak plutonium facility on the shore of the Techa River in the Russian town of Muslyomova could be dug up, saving an estimated 350 lives. 'For about $200, the cost of a refrigerator, we are able to save someone's life,' says Richard Fuller, founder of Blacksmith."

Polluted Sites?

[chromozone (847904)]

I didn't see MySpace on the list

Re: Polluted Sites?

[chuckymonkey (1059244)]

Contaminated isn't the word for Myspace. More like blight on the face of humanity that seeps glittery pus over open wounds reeking of rotten meat and cheese. Also it is painful to look at.

Re: Polluted Sites?

[dgun (1056422)]

Contaminated isn't the word for Myspace. More like blight on the face of humanity that seeps glittery pus over open wounds reeking of rotten meat and cheese. Also it is painful to look at.

I'm so putting that on my blogz, lolz.

Re: Polluted Sites?

[The Master Control P (655590)]

Along these lines, we must never forget Penny Arcade's description of 4chan/b/. To paraphrase: "/b/ isn't the bottom of the internet barrel; It's more like if the bottom of the Internet barrel had it's own barrel, and the bottom of *that* barrel leaked out into a set of festering, pustulent ooze. That ooze would be /b/."

WTB!!

[Berenger (177367)]

Please tell me more about this $200 fridge.

Re:WTB!!

[datapharmer (1099455)]

It has two wire shelves that are not adjustable. There is no light when you open the door. It doesn't get particularly cold and there is no ice-maker, but if you fill the ice tray it might actually freeze if you turn it to coldest and keep it closed for 24 hours. The door has no built in shelving, and it has a place on the handle where you can put a lock. It is 4.1 Cubic Feet and commonly found in hotel rooms with little itsy bitsy alice-in-wonderland size bottles of things to drink in it that will quadruple your hotel bill in one night.

Now you know.

Borders.

[sumdumass (711423)]

I need a map with country border on it. I couldn't find any in the US or Canada. But Europe, I couldn't tell which country was which or if it is old soviet union countries.

Actually, I'm kind of wondering why there isn't any marks in the US. Are we supposed to be the polluters of the world? Is there a mistake that the US is clean enough not to be on the list?

Re:

[by Anonymous Coward]

Along with manufacturing (due to higher labor costs), U.S. businesses have also outsourced their dangerous and high pollution (due to EPA and OSHA). So in a way "U.S." (although technically global, and you may toss in European and Japanese) companies may be polluting as bad as ever. Just not so much on U.S., (western european, or Japanese) soil.

Basically "first worlders" have finally developed a strong NIMBYism learned from past mistakes, and are now getting around to cleaning up the mess at home. Unfortuna

Dioxin, sure, but DDT? No.

[Kadin2048 (468275)]

I agree with the rest of your post, but you shouldn't just blithely toss in "DDT" with your list of toxins. There's nothing particularly wrong with DDT, used correctly, particularly in malaria-prone areas. In fact it was/is one of our best weapons against malaria-carrying mosquitoes. That the developed world has choked off supplies of DDT to the developing world, without providing much in the way of a replacement (ironically, many of the replacements for DDT are much more toxic than DDT is) is a travesty.

DDT was a casualty of Western gluttony and reactionism. We took something that worked well and sprayed it absolutely everywhere, far in excess of any defensible use, until it created a problem. Then, when we realized it was a problem, we went totally arse over teakettle: banned the stuff completely and pressured other countries to do the same, rather than realizing that it was the irresponsible use that was really to blame, and that there were parts of the world where any rational cost/benefit analysis still called for it.

Re:Dioxin, sure, but DDT? No.

[kcelery (410487)]

I think pesticide that does not decompose as DDT is not a good idea. In around the 60s, there was once a virgin forest in northern China, the trees were infected with some bugs. Some guys brought in 6-6-6 to spray the area by plane. The bug issue was then under control. 30 years later, farmers deforest some of the area and grow crops because it is supposed to be a pristine virgin land. Crops sent to Japan were rejected because of pesticide overdose. Those farmers sworn that they have never used pesticide on those farm land. Then some one skeptic went to investigate and found the pesticide were remained by the spray 30 years ago.

I know people have to use chemicals to control insects. The ones that does not disintegrate is not a good idea.

DDT over the top

[dachshund (300733)]

Then, when we realized it was a problem, we went totally arse over teakettle: banned the stuff completely and pressured other countries to do the same, rather than realizing that it was the irresponsible use that was really to blame, and that there were parts of the world where any rational cost/benefit analysis still called for it.

DDT is not banned in most of the developing world; it can be obtained, and rather cheaply. Nobody has cut off supplies. What has actually happened is that--- due to massive overuse for agricultural spraying--- many species of Malaria-carrying mosquito have developed immunity. Simultaneously, other more effective pesticides have dropped in price to the point where DDT is just one of many tools in the arsenal (and an ineffective one in most cases). To counter the notion that DDT has been banned everywhere, it's informative to note that a number of countries still use some quantity of DDT in their anti-malaria programs, but these efforts have only limited success and only in certain regions where DDT immunity has not been fully established.

The argument "for" DDT is mostly political, and carried along by people who aren't familiar with the facts. Some people are tempted by the notion that DDT is some kind of panacea for Malaria, but that evil environmentalist hippies are using their awesome power to prevent it. Of course, there's usually very little evidence supporting the latter notion, but it's tempting to believe because it sounds like a "free lunch" solution to a hard problem (one that happens to reinforce some folks' pre-conceived political notions). Unfortunately, the idea founders on, well, just about every basic fact of the story--- including the very important one that many of the nations that would ostensibly be "saved" by DDT use have chosen not to use it because it doesn't work anymore.

http://info-pollution.com/ddtban.htm [info-pollution.com]
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2007/05/who_put_out_the_contract_on_ra.php#more [scienceblogs.com]

Re:Dioxin, sure, but DDT? No.

[Goaway (82658)]

No. You are falling for anti-environmentalist FUD spread by chemical companies.

http://timlambert.org/2005/10/crime-of-the-century/ [timlambert.org]
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2007/05/this_week_in_the_unending_war.php [scienceblogs.com]

And so on.

Re:

[Adambomb (118938)]

But, c'mon guy. He's so serial.

Re:Mental Pollution is Borderless

[clarkkent09 (1104833)]

while 7 of the top 10 real polluters are Soviet/Russia and China.

I am not nitpicking when I point out that those are 7 out of 10 most polluted cities/areas, not the biggest polluters. Not the same thing.

If you bother to check the actual data USA consistently comes up in top 5 biggest polluters both per capita and overall. China and (not Soviet anymore) Russia are right up there as well to be sure, but ranting about media propaganda and hypocritcal AlGore elitists doesn't reveal anything about the actual problem, only about your political preferences (and perhaps what radio stations you listen to).

Re:

[khallow (566160)]

People are still repeating this canard? The scam is that people are counting carbon dioxide as a pollutant even though it's far less harmful for the environment than the junk that these other countries dump into the environment. Once you ignore (or weigh carbon dioxide appropriately by the actual harm it causes, which incidentally has much the same effect as ignoring it), the US no longer comes up in the top five pollutors per capita. And I doubt that the US pollutes as much as China, India, Indonesia, Nige

Re:Mental Pollution is Borderless

[TapeCutter (624760)]

It works like the "war on terror", the US makes a mess overseas so it doesn't have to clean up at home. /ducks

Seriously though, it IS about consumption and the methods used to sustain and grow it. The US consumes ~50% of the worlds resources with only ~5% of the population, China and India are busy posioning themselves to stock the shelves of the western world just as Detroit did in the 50's only on a much larger scale.

"To find out if the Slashdot crowd honestly cares about the enviroment, or are simply hypocritcal AlGore elitists, just watch how this thread gets moderated."

Well atm you have +4 interesting and the number of posts on any environmental issue shows a lot of slashdotteres "care" about the issue one way or another. Personally I think I have "cared" about the environment since my parents raised me that way nearly five decades ago. I have no idea if I am an "Al Gore elitist" but I can tell you how the climate, bird and animal species have changed in my small corner of Australia over the last 40yrs.

Gore's documentry is just that, a documentry, it's a "slide show" for laymen that spells out what the IPCC reports say, Al Gore is simply demonstrating his personal and political support for the findings in the reports (ie: they are not "his ideas"). Gore was initially skeptical of AGW but was persuaded by (amoung others) Hansen [wikipedia.org] to change his mind. Regardless of what else Gore has done I would have thought an influential politician with the ability to be skeptical of his own ideas and interested enough to take the time and effort needed to understand the science behind a complex subject would be regarded as a GoodThing(TM), particularly on a "nerd" site.

None of this means that governments of the developing world can shirk their responsibilty or that Al Gore doesn't (ironically) create a shitload of CO2 with his "personal presentations" of the movie to the likes of Bush, Murdoch, Howard, Blair, Putin, et-al. Economic infrastrature has outgrown single nations (eg: oil/gas pipelines, telecomms, food production, ect), what is missing is a coherent science based plan "to preserve the commons" on a scale bigger than any single nation. However as soon as one mentions "global plan" it's "OMG Stalin" rather than "hmmm, the plan to remove lead from car emmisions seems to be working".

Americans responsible for Chernobyl?

[Nymz (905908)]

It works like the "war on terror", the US makes a mess overseas so it doesn't have to clean up at home.

Are you seriously going to tell me you didn't read the article? That Chernobyl was due to greedy Americans consuming so much energy? That any of the coal, metal, or chemical manufacturing plants were equally unsafe and intentionally destructive to the enviroment because America made them do it?

I personally look at facts and reality, and then I come to a conclusion. You appear to conclude that America is responsible for everything, and then twist any reality or new fact to fit.

Re:Borders.

[mh1997 (1065630)]

I need a map with country border on it

I hear you can obtain one of those at your local bookstore. Some other options are things called "atlases" and "globes".

I personally have such as heard such as a reliable source saying that she believes many US Americans don't have maps, and such as Asia, and such as think of the children. So a comment such as yours is wrong.

Outsourcing

[Bios_Hakr (68586)]

Every time I see a company go overseas to do this kind of thing, it breaks my heart.

We should ensure that any company that does work overseas, does it to US or higher standards. The includes Nike paying US minimum wages and Exxon following US pollution guidelines.

Re:Outsourcing

[Breakfast Pants (323698)]

Yep, because when Nike doesn't go in somewhere to charge $.50 an hour to make shoes, alternative jobs will magically spring up that pay the people $7.25. What's more likely is the competition from Nike would have driven up the cost above what they could get without Nike.

Re:

[datapharmer (1099455)]

No offense, but where is your data?

Multinationals use international trade regulations to their advantage. By aligning with lending groups like the IMF, multinationals use national debt recovery to force laws through that require full employment and cuts to social welfare systems so that taxes can be levied and surplus budgets can be made to repay international debt. The result: the poor are forced into indentured servitude because they can no longer get social services and those that had higher wages and

Re:

[CodeBuster (516420)]

Multinationals use international trade regulations to their advantage.

They play the game according to the rules that the governments of the world set. If you dont like the rules then blame some of those governments for allowing themselves to be duped. In the case of those governments that are totalitarian the people are going to screwed in any case so what is the difference? There are some countries that we the United States won't do business with after all for that reason, although certain European nat

Quoting "The Nation"?! LOL!!

[mi (197448)]

"The Nation" are further to the left than the wall... Quoting them is not "data".

Argentina's problems came entirely from major mismanagement and rejection of the free market principles. The privatized their state-owned enterprises, which was the right thing to do. But then the state spent the proceeds from privatization on propping up the local currency... Voters loved the short-term gains (something stock-holders are frequently accused of preferring, BTw), and when the money ran out, the government began

Re:

[Score Whore (32328)]

Because the shoes have to get from there to here. If the labor cost is the same then Nike won't go there because the shipping cost would make it more expensive to do the work in those countries. So now you're in the situation where there is no job at all. I guess the question is, would they rather get paid $0.50 or $0.00?

Not an expert on Nike or defending their actions, but come on, put a little thought into this will you?

Re:

[CodeBuster (516420)]

They would never pay that wage to locals in any case. If they were somehow forced to pay that level of wage then they would probably prefer to hire Americans and other western educated peoples instead. This is the same reason why unions *always* support minimum wages and high labor standards and it is not out of the goodness of their hearts or their concern for foreign workers (although they would like you to think so). No, they know that if employers are forced to pay a high minimum wage for workers then t

Re:

[KillerBob (217953)]

I really wish that Liberals would pick up and read their economics textbooks before making such silly assertions and suggestions concerning wages, prices, globalization, etc. Are there problems? Yes, but offering solutions which every econ 101 student knows to be flawed doesn't really help either.

I'll thank you not to attribute that to liberalism. I'm very much a liberal, thank you, but I know what you're talking about.

When you start offering higher rates of pay, it becomes less economical. In some industri

Re:

[CodeBuster (516420)]

There is no reason we should not set some minimal standards for wages, environment, worker protection, etc,, in our trade agreements.

How about less goods and services from China? I would bet that most Americans, when asked if they prefer higher prices at Walmart in exchange for better wages, worker protection, and environmental protections in China would probably tell you they want lower prices and more American jobs (workers in China be damned as far as they are concerned).

If China wants to sell to

Re:Outsourcing

[Watson Ladd (955755)]

We have one atmosphere, one hydrosphere. Smog in LA has been found to come from burning forests in Southeast Asia. Chernobyl spewed radioactivity over Finland, hundreds of kilometers away. Flame retardants have been found in Antarctic penguins. If China wants to fill up their corner of the earth with toxic waste that waste will travel and end up everywhere. And the free market doesn't care about the needs of those with no money. In the words of Brecht: ''And there are some who are in darkness, and the others are in light. And you see the ones in brightness, and those in darkness drop from sight.'' Read Dickens or Sinclair to see how true this is.

Re:

[Fulcrum of Evil (560260)]

How about less goods and services from China?

That would be one effect, yes.

China is a sovereign country and they will run their afairs how they choose. You will never win with "forcing" China to comply.

And we are a sovereign nation, too - nobody is forcing us to buy from them. We are adding a proviso to the trade agreement and China is free to take it or leave it. I think they'll take it.

There is no need to "regulate" it per se so long imported products are inspected for safety and the information

Re:

[Bluesman (104513)]

"What have we got to lose except a massive trade deficit?"

The Chinese hold a significant amount of U.S. currency as a backing reserve for their own. They could announce that they are selling off all U.S. currency reserves, which would sink the value of the dollar almost overnight.

This would send the U.S. into a severe inflation-based depression that would make the deflation-based on in the thirties look like a mild recession, since the Fed is seemingly only capable of inflating the currency even more in a

Re:

[BakaHoushi (786009)]

Not the parent, but...

Yes. Profit is the first, and only, goal of business.

And that is why I believe profit-above-all-else mentalities must be destroyed. See, I have no problems with a company that wants to make money. I'm a college student, but I also work part time at a grocery store as a janitor. Why do I work as a janitor? Because I make money doing it. I make exactly $8.50 an hour (and with about 20 hours per week and factoring out taxes) I make about $150 a week. I would not clean toilets and wipe up

Re:

[hobo sapiens (893427)]

I don't think this post was a troll. In fact it makes a parallel that is there to make: the American slave owners and modern industrialists have some things in common, not the least of which is the total willingness to make a buck at the expense of their fellow man. Even if sweatshops, etc aren't quite like American slavery, it's still a situation where the rich are exploiting those who can be exploited.

Can't exploit people here on American soil? Fine, we'll go somewhere else. Case in point, from TFA: "

Of course the workers are free to choose...

[Poingggg (103097)]

...between starving to death or working too many hours under bad circumstances for a too-little-to-live-from-but-just-too-much-to-die salary. Free choice all over!

Re:

[drsquare (530038)]

We should ensure that any company that does work overseas, does it to US or higher standards. The includes Nike paying US minimum wages and Exxon following US pollution guidelines.

And conversely, when an American company does business in Europe, they have to pay their American workers European minimum wages, and give them European holidays, benefits etc. So if Microsoft want to sell Windows in France, Microsoft workers can't work more than 35 hours a week, with six weeks holidays a year. Otherwise they'd ju

Re:

[dbIII (701233)]

Every time I see a company go overseas to do this kind of thing, it breaks my heart.

Seeing US Management arrive in a country with less regulation is like seeing Scandinavians in a bottle shop. Some can not believe what they can get away with so they have to try a bit of everything until the locals have a few stern words. Actual slavery in Micronesia would come close to the top of the abuses, but Bhopal was the worst in my opinion. Can't you guys give them an education or cut off their cocaine supply or

Re:

[dbIII (701233)]

Managers are paid to manage. If they cannot get staff because they can not deal with the corrupt outside agencies effectly then they should not have those jobs. Other companies cope under far more extreme conditions - consider the oil companies working in Nigeria now.

As for the statement about the shortage of suitable canditates at the time, I know a few Indian engineers over 50 and I don't live in India. Anybody on this forum that studied engineering has probably had an Indian lecturer no matter where i

Dollar value of a human life

[by Anonymous Coward]

Companies do accounting to determine the value of everything, including the cost of lawsuits due to deaths caused by their products. Maybe the companies determined that, to them, a human life costs less than $200 dollars. This is not a joke. This really happens.

The value of litigation.

[mosb1000 (710161)]

Many of the "companies" you are citing are or were principally owned by government organizations, and are/were immune from litigation. In the cases where they weren't, they were situated in countries where the law does not provide any kind of protection or possible recourse for the poor.

For all you people who complain about litigation, this is why we have it. If your actions adversely affect others, they can seek financial compensation and punitive damages. This has the effect of correcting negative eternalitys if and when they are discovered, and giving people good reason to be careful in determining all the effects of their actions.

certain weeds can fix this

[wizardforce (1005805)]

certain weeds of the Astragalus and Stanleya Genus can clean up areas high in selenium and plants that have high levels of glutathione can help mop up cadmium and other toxic metals. the Astragalus especially can take up oxyanions of the chromium group [molybdenum and tungsten, likely chromium as well] not only that but bacteria like deinococcus radiodurans can withstand high radiation levels can interestingly they bind metals to certain chemical groups, specifically sulfur and selenium compounds. they can also reduce metal ions common to toxic waste sites and in effect lock them up as mineral deposits so that they are not leaching into water supplies. If the metals are not mobile, they are not nearly as poisonous or dangerous as they are leaching into the local water supplies.

Re:

[chuckymonkey (1059244)]

That's a very interesting post, the only question that I have is how viral are these plants? If they were to be introduced into an ecosystem what kind of impact would they have after they served their intended purpose?

Re:

[wizardforce (1005805)]

they have a relatively long germination time and require animals to take the seeds through the digestive tract, it's called scarification which involves weakening the seed coat enough for germination to take place. the acids in animal's stomachs do the work and the plants themselves are not very "viral" we have ways of killing them and they already exist in many fields. the only thing about them is that you need to keep cattle and other livestock away from them otherwise the high levels of selenium the p

Re:

[chuckymonkey (1059244)]

Thank you, that was what I was interested in knowing. Unlike the poster above who contributes nothing, not even humor to the discussion.

Ah, the w-*cough*onders of Free Tr-*cough*ade

[sethstorm (512897)]

Now why do we keep on wanting to sell ourselves out to these places again? Oh, wait- it's to escape regulation.

No, it is not

[WindBourne (631190)]

It is to increase short-term profits. I have been working towards doing manufacturing in the USA and it has been suggested more than once that it should be moved to China. And EVERYBODY says to go their because it is cheaper. It is never to escape regulations. Why is it cheaper? Because China cuts corners on manufacturing and has their yuan fixed to the dollar( via basket, but still fixed). The ppl that I talked to wanted me to lower the weight of the item that I was looking to build. In particular, thin ma

Oil Sands

[flyingfsck (986395)]

Bah, the worst pollution is the oil sands in Northern Alberta - billions of tons of polluted sand - now being meticulously washed clean by the big oil companies. The oily gunk so removed is then distributed for disposal in millions of privately owned mobile incinerators, leaving behind nice clean sand for future (post global warming) children to play in and build sand castles on the pristine arctic beaches...

Russian village huge human nuclear experiment

[AHuxley (892839)]

Yes it does get much worse.
Not just toxic sites, but you must stay so the gov can study you!
From birth to death, generation after generation.

Small clip about the people around Mayak, a 1950's nuclear fuel reprocessing plant on the River Techa, Russia.
It "leaked". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OR1wo5s3Ua4 [youtube.com]

They still got Chernobyl wrong

[BlueParrot (965239)]

Have a look at the page for Chernobyl. The same old... Pictures of children with diseases that are not related to radiation. A huge focus on Uranium and Plutonium, despite these metals being far less of a concern than the fission products and minor actinides. They mention deaths from Thyroid cancer, which is caused by Iodine-131 (half-life of 8 days). Somehow I suspect that not much of this will be left more than 30 years latter... Then there is this lovely quote:

Skin lesions, respiratory ailments, infertility and birth defects were the norm for years following the accident.

Really? I don't think the word "norm" means what they think it means...

I'm not trying to say the Chernobyl accident wasn't a very bad accident or that the area isn't heavily polluted. It just gets a bit tiresome to see the same mistakes over and over again. For a list which focuses on the polluted status of various regions you would have expected to see he studies that have been done on how birds have been hard hit by the contamination, instead you get pictures of mentally handicapped children being abandoned, which is of course more a consequence of the failure to provide care for them than it is a result of the accident.

There are problems in the Chernobyl area, but this article fails quite badly at describing them.

Re:

[EricFenderson (64220)]

For a better look, check out the article that National Geographic ran a while back:

http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0604/sights_n_sounds/index.html [nationalgeographic.com]

Unfortunately, I don't think the whole text is available online, but it's worth looking up if you're interested in some of the current issues there.

Re:

[by Anonymous Coward]

Incomplete list without Toxic Town and our world class PCB contamination.

Monsanto [chemicalin...chives.org] would be the guilty party there and they are trying to gain control of our food supply [greenpeace.org]. Plenty more info out there, including old Slashdot articles with info on the evil moves of Monsanto. If Slashdotters do some research on this they will even discover that the government has helped Monsanto with numerous coverups and power plays. Do we really want to trust Monsanto with our food supply?

Re:

[jcr (53032)]

No, that's just one of the most polluted places in the United States.

-jcr