Slashdot Log In
The World's 10 Dirtiest Cities
Posted by
samzenpus
on Wed Jun 25, 2008 10:56 PM
from the none-more-dirty dept.
from the none-more-dirty dept.
neever writes "You may already know about the pollution plight of Linfen, China. But how about the heavy metals Pittsburghers breathe in on a daily basis? Or the incomparable smog Milanesi put up with? PopSci has culled an eye-opening selection of some of the world's most problematic cities. From the painfully high cancer rates in Sumgayit, Azerbaijan to the acid rain destroying La Oroya, Peru, writer Jason Daley walks readers through the lowest of the low; and explains why, despite it all, there's still hope for these places."
Related Stories
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
Bad air... (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't know which cities are listed as the Popsci servers seem to be down, but a couple of weeks ago flying out of Los Angeles, the pollution seemed pretty bad as can be seen in this picture [utah.edu] of the afternoon sun over the San Gabriel Mountains.
From some of my other travels throughout the world, I am guessing that L.A. is not even close to how dirty some cities can get particularly in Russia. If the air is worse than it is in L.A., then it should really, really make you worry.
Re:Bad air... (Score:5, Interesting)
I have a friend from China that was excited to be able to find the sun. First spotting in 10 years. I realize there are a lot of high buildings in China, so you wouldn't necessarily notice it unless you were looking, but that still surprised me quite a bit.
It's come a long way, but you can smell the air, sometimes quite strongly.
Parent
Re:Bad air... (Score:4, Funny)
>It's come a long way, but you can smell the air, sometimes quite strongly.
Don't trust air you can't see.
Parent
Re:Bad air... (Score:4, Funny)
And air that you CAN see is better? :-P
Parent
Re:Bad air... (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Bad air... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Bad air... (Score:5, Informative)
I don't think it's so much about the high buildings as it is simply the air quality itself. I was in Shanghai less than a year ago, and while waiting for my flight to start boarding, I watched another take off. It seemed barely a mile away when it became completely obscured by the brown-yellow haze of smog.
When I found myself in Minneapolis about 16 hours later, it was amazing and refreshing that I could watch that plane fly away until it was so small as to be unrecognizable.
Parent
Tragedy of the commons (Score:4, Insightful)
And what do people complain about in these shit places? The environment? No! They complain about lack of money, about laws and other worthless shit.
Back few months ago, Bombay,India wanted to mandate *some* regulations that would require those shitty rickshaws to stop using kerosine mix crap for fuel. Never passed because of lobbying from the rickshaw drivers. I guess they don't give a shit if they die at 30 from lung cancer, but they do care if they have to pay *anything* to make their own environment cleaner.
This situation is the the everywhere. Kind of makes you think how shortsighted we think.
Parent
Re:Bad air... (Score:4, Interesting)
I was staying outside of LA in a high rise hotel a few years ago, and you could see the buildings of LA on the horizon, and they looked like they were covered by a slightly yellow dome of smog. It was very discernible, and seemed to have a solid line differentiating it from the clear air above.
Parent
Re:Bad air... (Score:5, Interesting)
Hmm....speaking of LA.
I gotta figure that New Orleans, LA is in that list...Lordy, people here have no idea what a trash can is, they just throw shit in the streets. I guess a lot of it comes from getting used to having street sweepers follow behind you like after Mardi Gras parades...or the way the Quarter gets 'magically ' cleaned up every day.
And, as far as pollution goes...well, that little strip from NOLA westward isn't called 'cancer alley' for nothing. Part of the price I guess of supplying about 1/3 of the energy (oil and gas) needs of the rest of the nation. But, hell....we may not live long, but, we live it up while we're here.
Parent
Re:Bad air... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Bad air... (Score:4, Interesting)
No offense, but New Orleans is disgusting. I was there 7 years ago, stayed at some fancy hotel in the French Quarter (don't remember the name, company paid for it). Everywhere you walk, your shoes make that sticky sound like velcro, every alley you walk past smells like piss. Honestly reminded me of some cheap bars from my college days. I don't want to know what was making the sidewalks sticky, I was just glad to leave there. Nasty, gross place.
Parent
Re:Bad air... (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah...I'll admit it used to get kinda bad. That has changed since the storm tho. They have hired a new company to manage garbage and cleaning the Quarter. They even have a special formula they spray on the streets and trash areas every morning....that is pretty nice smelling.
I forget their name, but they really do do a good job now, and that smell of spilled drinks, puke, garbage is no longer there like it used to be at times in the past.
Frankly I was amazed how nice it was down there last time I went down there.
Parent
Re:Bad air... (Score:5, Informative)
I was staying outside of LA in a high rise hotel a few years ago, and you could see the buildings of LA on the horizon, and they looked like they were covered by a slightly yellow dome of smog. It was very discernible, and seemed to have a solid line differentiating it from the clear air above.
The boundary you saw between the smog and clean air above is from an inversion layer [wikipedia.org]
Parent
Re:Bad air... (Score:5, Informative)
Phoenix gets this too in the winter. The cold air caps the warm (nasty) air underneath. But then again both Phoenix and LA are build in valleys. In winter nights here the sky turns a nice red color (the same color as northern "snow sky"), from all the light pollution bouncing off the smog layer. Though Phoenix has some of the most beautiful sunsets in the world, thanks to the brown cloud, and the huge amounts of desert dust in the air.
LA, of course, is much worse. But then again, I try to avoid that place like the plague. It takes 8 hours just to pass through town.
Dersert+Valley= an idiotic place to build a city, generally.
From what I here from my friends who spend time in the megalopolis' of China, though, LA and Phoenix has NOTHING on them. Pictures of Beijing and Shanghai that I've seen, are absolutely VILE. Not only is it high-rises to the horizon, but the sky is this awesome color of brown that only LA can dream of. It is almost opaque.
Parent
Re:Bad air... (Score:5, Informative)
The boundary you saw between the smog and clean air above is from an inversion layer.
No, it's called the West Side. That small sliver of land that runs along the coast of the Pacific Ocean where the rich, the famous, and the wanna be rich and famous live and enjoy cool ocean breezes and the California experience, while the rest of us grind out our existence in what's left, a semi-arid, hot, dirty and treeless environment where, during the days, cars swarm like locusts, but at night, disappear, leaving those endless miles of pavement open for the crack whores and gang kids to conduct their business or make that late night trip to their local 7-11. If it wasn't for the streetlights, twinkling like jewels in the night sky for everyone fortunate to live above us, you'd think no one lived here at all.
Parent
Re:Bad air... (Score:5, Funny)
>you could see the buildings of LA on the horizon
So it was a clear day then?
Parent
LA has gotten better (Score:3, Informative)
That's the low inversion layer and no matter how little smog there is in LA, it will always look worse.
I lived in metro LA for almost two decades and the situation was improving over that whole period.
Tokyo, Kobe and Beijing to name three cities I either lived in or visited since have far, far worse problems. Beijing is the most polluted city I've ever had the misfortune of visiting.
Re:Bad air... (Score:5, Funny)
A lovely gin and tonic to start the flight off and the option to stretch ones legs out and work on the MacBook Air in-between looking out the window to take pictures makes every flight much more pleasant.
Is this how people usually turn out when they buy a Mac?
Parent
Re:Bad air... (Score:4, Informative)
What you are seeing is what locals refer to as 'June Gloom' or 'Marine Layer' - what the rest of the world likes to refer to as common fog.
As for the actual air quality - having lived here for the last 5 years, I can attest that it isn't bad - compared to when I visited in the 90's, or worse, 80's. If you look around the roads of LA you will notice that almost all vehicles are late model - due to the strick emission standards the state has placed.
The only time I have ever seen actual 'smog' is driving into the core city, from the 101 freeway, on a day at about 105 degrees, stuck in massive traffic. Then you see a very slight 'cloud'
Parent
come on (Score:5, Funny)
Re:come on (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah I know! Penn and Teller totally debunked the existence of air pollution on "Bullshit!". People are SO naive.
Parent
Dirtiest (Score:5, Funny)
While reading the title of this article, my interest peaked just before I realized that by "dirtiest", it was actually talking about dirt.
The City You're Looking For (Score:4, Informative)
Portland, Oregon.
Highest percapita strip club concentration, and legalized live sex shows. And while not all the ladies shave, pretty much all of them are down.
Parent
Re:The City You're Looking For (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:The City You're Looking For (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:The City You're Looking For (Score:5, Funny)
Elko, NV [wikipedia.org] has 16,000 people and 5 active brothels.
On a per capita basis, I think they've got Portland beat for dirtiness.
Parent
Re:Dirtiest (Score:5, Funny)
the word you're looking for is 'piqued.' peaked is tent in your pants.
Parent
"The oceans were full..." (Score:5, Funny)
It may not be a city, but New Jersey deserves at least an honorable mention.
digg (Score:4, Insightful)
/. seems to be turning into digg with all these 'worlds #' topics...
Pittsburgh for University..... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Pittsburgh for University..... (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.forbes.com/2007/04/16/worlds-cleanest-cities-biz-logistics-cx_rm_0416cleanest_slide_16.html?thisSpeed=30000 [forbes.com]
I hope this link works for you guys
Parent
Re:Pittsburgh for University..... (Score:4, Informative)
Ay! I've just signed myself up for four years of university in Pittsburgh. Anyone know a good method of limiting heavy metal exposure in such an environment.... Wait... Why would I want that?.. I'll be IRON MAN!
---end quote---
Pittsburgh is a very different city than many Americans picture. There's only a small part of the city that actually has the pollution levels cited in the study. Steel and coke works have given way to robotics and medical research. Disclosure: I am finishing a graduate degree at Pitt right now. I may be biased, but I do hope a new study is done that covers the city as a whole.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Not only that, but the methodology was a lil flawed in that the main sensor was maybe a mile from the coke works and not really the city proper. What also comes in to play is the number of coal power plants still kickin' in Ohio, West Virgina, New York and central PA; that's a problem in most of the rust belt.
It certainly isn't a progressive utopia like Portland or Seattle (maybe I'm a little bitter as people I know are moving there at an impressive pace), but it's doing much better as parent post noted.Tha
It doesn't have to be that way... (Score:5, Interesting)
Server is already /.ed?
Anyway, I live in one of the minor million-plus cities of Japan near Tokyo, and I just want to note that you can have a high-tech, high-quality lifestyle without destroying your environment. Whenever I hear a story like this, I think about running into quail the morning, almost literally. They are sometimes foraging within a few feet of the gate, and they figure people are basically harmless to about 3 meters. There's a little river two stations up, and it's heavily populated with half-meter carp. I walked about half a kilometer along it the other day, and there were almost always fish visible, and sometimes scores of fish. It's a matter of priorities, I think--but I was annoyed a couple of years ago when they cut down a pretty large bamboo grove and built a bunch of houses there...
Not sure of all of the reasons, but I feel like good mass transit is a big chunk of it. Heavy recycling probably helps, though they recently increased the garbage collection taxes quite a bit.
Re:It doesn't have to be that way... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Carp are normally vegetarian but seem to also congregate around sewage discharge into streams and rivers. So they are not necessarily a sign of a healthy environment. But I think in Japan they are popular fish, while in the US they are considered foreign invasive species. In PA you could legally shoot them with a bow and arrow.
Re:It doesn't have to be that way... (Score:4, Informative)
Correct one: http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1661031_1661028_1661016,00.html [time.com]
Also, here's a very different list,
http://www.forbes.com/2008/02/24/pollution-baku-oil-biz-logistics-cx_tl_0226dirtycities_slide_26.html?thisSpeed=30000 [forbes.com]
using the Mercer Health and Sanitation Index Score as the ranking value.
The first five are:
- Baku, Azerbaijan
- Dhaka, Bangladesh
- Antananarivo, Madagascar
- Port au Prince, Haiti
- Mexico City, Mexico
Parent
That's not polluted, THIS is polluted (Score:5, Informative)
Dioxin and phenol levels 7 orders of magnitude above the safe limit, an annual death rate exceeding the birth rate by 260% (life expectancies: M=42, F=47) and generally more soviet era chem-weapons-chem than you can shake a mutant-whatever at.
The wiki doesn't really do it justice...I saw the BBC doco [bbc.co.uk] once, and it was appalling. There's a `pond' so choked with chemicals that it appears to have a consistency closer to foam rubber than water, and a huge pit in the ground with hundreds of barrels of toxic waste spilling out the top of it. It's hard to believe that people actually live there. Truly tragic.
Parent
Sepultura FTW! (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually they only get second place on this list (Cubatao, Brazil).
From the lyrics of their 1993 song Biotech is Godzilla:
"World's most polluted town"
Air-melts your face
Deformed children all around
Does anybody know more comprehensive list? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Does anybody know more comprehensive list? (Score:5, Informative)
Not a comprehensive list, but it does include some of the cities you mentioned.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/12/15/news/pollute.php [iht.com]
"The dirtiest of the major cities, ranked by micrograms of particles of pollution dust per cubic meter, was Beijing, at 142. By comparison, Paris averages around 22 micrograms, London 24 and New York 27. The WHO guideline is 20."
Parent
In Beijing at the moment (Score:5, Interesting)
The first time I visited Beijing, I was frankly shocked that life can exist in this environment. I'm in Beijing again right now, and have just gotten used to the idea that you need to budget some time each morning to hack up gunk from your lungs. I'm less than 1 kilometer from the forbidden city at the moment, but can't see it. I know it's there, because a rainstorm earlier this week cleared the air enough to see that far.
Great city once you get past the air though...
You think that's bad... (Score:5, Interesting)
China in general vs. California during fires (Score:4, Interesting)
Recent fires in California have turned the Sun that subtle orange color, and left the air with a noticeable stench of smoke. On a local Bay Area network TV station, they interviewed a woman who had just flown back from China. She said that these conditions were ALMOST as bad. Almost??? That blew my mind. Imagine living with smoke worse than this ALL YEAR LONG.
Within another 10 years, maybe sooner (Score:4, Insightful)
Some additional info (Score:5, Interesting)
1. In Norilsk the soil around the city is so polluted that it's economically feasible to mine it for nickel.
2. There is an alternative list with more information and better research from the Blacksmith Institute: The World's Worst Polluted Places [blacksmithinstitute.org]. (However, it contains Europe's biggest de facto nature reserve as one of the most polluted places in the world (Chernobyl exclusion zone))
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:You want bad air...? (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:Pollution (Score:5, Insightful)
It works like this:
The main reason Coal is being used to produce electricity rather than say Nuclear, Wind Power and Solar is price. Coal is cheap. If you impose a carbon tax , however, forcing companies that emit a lot of CO2 to pay for it, then that will make electricity generation from coal more expensive, and thus hopefully cause electric utility companies to build nuclear power plants, wind turbines, and solar panels, instead.
The idea is that you integrate the environmental cost of pollution into the market system, thus forcing supliers to take environmental concerns into consideration when making business decisions. Now, while flat out taxation is one way to achieve this, it is very difficult to determine how much to charge for a given amount fo environmental damage, and this is where tradeable emission permits comes into play. Rather than taxing companies directly, what you do is you decide how much of a certain pollutant we can emit without causing major trouble, and then you auction it off to highest bidder. That way you force the market to adapt to a lower emission scenario, and the price adjusts itself according to normal market principles. With time you can then reduce the "acceptable" level of emissions as technology improves, periodically reducing the amount of pollution.
The catch is of course that this WILL have negative effects on other aspects of the economy. The important thing to realize is that this is not some new negative effect the government has created, it is a price that we were previously paying in terms of environmental damage. What tradeable permits do is to limit the extent to which manufacturers can impose that cost on everybody, and instead put it right down where it belongs , with the consumers that use goods and services that generate pollution during their production. Yes, I said consumers, not companies. Manufacturers will on pass the cost to the consumers, in the form of higher prices, and this will in turn reduce demand.
"Oh but you can tax as much as you want people still want to drive their cars... blah blah blah...". This is why you use tradeable permits rather than direct taxation. Tradeable permits outright forces the market to adapt meaning prices will increasethe UNTIL they are high enough that demand drops. When it comes to goods that people consume a lot regardless of price ( such as gasoline ) this trabnslates into a large price increase. When it comes to things you can eaisly replace with other things, the increase in price will be smaller.
The real problem is that the cost of CO2 is really really large. Emitting it causes major damage to the planet, curtailing it causes huge costs to the environment. There isn't an easy solution to this, which is why a number of peopel prefer sticking their head in the sand and deny the whole thing. I am seriously very sceptical to weather the necessary measures will be taken. People won't put up with a 3 fold increase in energy prices ( which is where wind power is relative to coal and nuclear ) so if we hope to get rid of coal it would appear that unless we get a sudden breakthrough in solar, only Nuclear has a chance to save us. Somewhat ironically, the most hardline environmentalist groups oppose it almost religiously, and thus it woudl appear we will be stuck with coal for a long time.
Parent