Meteorologist Jackie Meretsky

Of course I’m talking about the blacklist that the environmental group Green Cross Switzerland* recently produced which lists the most polluted places on the planet. Did you think I was talking about who made the “Worst Dressed List” at this years VMA’s?

Here’s who made this years list (in alphabetical order by country):

Sumgayit, Azerbaijan
Linfen, China
Tianying, China
Sukinda, India
Vapi, India
La Oroya, Peru
Dzerzhinsk, Russia
Norilsk, Russia
Chernobyl, Ukraine
Kabwe, Zambia

If you didn’t make this list, you may find yourself in the larger “Dirty 30” (get it) list, which also has places in China, India and Russia locked in a tight race of “who’s dirtier?” Of particular concern to the campaigning organization is that children are getting fatally poisoned from the polluted sites. Lead pollution is a key player in this list. According to the organization, the pollution produced from a lead producing facility in Tianying, China accounts for over half of the pollution in the whole country.

What is interesting about this blacklist is that the sites are in remote areas, far from capital cities or tourist attractions – but millions of people still live there. The kicker is that pollution controls are not as prevalent in these areas, or are weakly enforced unlike major cities like Moscow or Mumbai, which gain international attention, by the media and environmental organizations when disasters of any nature occur. In fact, I’ve only heard of one site in the top ten list, that being Chernobyl which had the worst accident in the history of nuclear power in April 1986. This occurred during the final stretch of the cold war, a period of conflict and competition between the U.S. and Russia. This period secured media attention for Russia and it’s cold war allies.

Nobody wants to be blacklisted, but sometimes it’s the only way to get attention, which is what the millions of people living in the polluted sites of China, India, Azerbaijan, Peru and Zambia need. Hopefully the U.S. will keep showing up on less pertinent lists, like “worst dressed” and “top 100 wealthiest people”.

As a sidenote, I am not on either of those two lists.

Yet.

*Green Cross Switzerland is part of the Green Cross International Organization. It was founded in 1993 by former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. It explores the damage caused by industrial and military disasters and how to clean up contaminated sites.