Top Ten Most Polluted Places in the World, 2006
Updated February 21, 2017 | Factmonster Staff 
This Top Ten list was compiled by the Technical Advisory Board of the Blacksmith Institute, an environmental NGO based in New York. The criteria used in ranking the include the size of the affected population, the severity of the toxins involved, and reliable evidence of health problems associated with the pollution.
- Chernobyl, Ukraine
The world's worst nuclear disaster took place on April 26, 1986. - Dzerzhinsk, Russia
A major Russian chemical manufacturing center, which produced Sarin and other deadly poisons during the cold war. Between 1930-1998, nearly 300,000 tons of chemical waste were improperly disposed of. - Haina, Dominican Republic
An urban area severely contaminated with lead from a now defunct automobile battery recycling plant. - Kabwe, Zambia
The country's second largest city is severely contaminated with lead from the mining industry. - La Oroya, Peru
Lead, copper, zinc, and sulfur dioxide from mining have contaminative the town. - Linfen, China
Severe air and water pollution from the coal, steel, and tar industries. - Maiuu Suu, Kyrgyzstan
This former Soviet uranium plant town is saturated with radioactive uranium mine tailings. - Norilsk, Russia
An industrial city in Siberia founded in 1935 as a slave labor camp, Norilsk is home of the world's largest heavy metals smelting complex and is plagued by severe air pollution. 9 - Ranipet, India
About 1,500,000 tons of tannery waste has accumulated in this town over the past two decades. - Rudnaya Pristan/Dalnegorsk, Russia
Severe lead contamination from an old smelter as well as the the unsafe transport of lead concentrate from the local lead mining site.
Source: the Blacksmith Institute, 2006.
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