Report Identifies Global Pollution Solutions

The successful progress made in cleaning up some of the world’s most polluted environments should been seen as a template for other communities to implement their own successful improvements, a new study states.  Issued on October 29th 2009, the report is the product of a collaboration between Green Cross Switzerland and the Blacksmith Institute – an US-based organisation that supports pollution clear-up operations around the world.  

Their World’s Worst Polluted Places study represents the fourth to have been released but – unlike those that have come before it – this one covers pollution solutions to a much greater extent.

“Tens of thousands of polluted sites contaminate local populations -- as many as 500 million people are poisoned each day in the developing world”, the study states. “Only a few of these problems have been fixed.  But it's a start and worth recognising.”

Pollution Clean Up

In other words – of the many polluted areas identified around the world – only a few sites are recognised as having implemented successful pollution clean-up strategies. 

“Here we are talking about successes but there's only 12 of them”, Blacksmith Institute’s president, Richard Fuller, advised representatives of the media.  He added: “We've spent hundreds of billions of dollars in the West cleaning up our pollution problems here and at the same time we've shifted all our industry overseas and what we've done is ended up poisoning all these people in all these places overseas.”

Solutions to Pollution

Here follows a list of some of the areas identified in the report, along with brief information on the nature of their solutions to pollution.

• Accra (Ghana), where cooking stoves have been introduced on a widespread basis to lower levels of the indoor air pollution that has been causing breathing difficulties for some.
• Delhi, where new low-emission vehicle technologies are helping to lower air pollution levels
• Shanghai, where a project is in motion to clean a stretch of water that has been polluted by sewage, and that is a source of drinking water for millions of people.
• Candelaria (Chile), where water treatment has been taking place.
• Parts of Eastern Europe affected by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, where psychological treatment efforts remain ongoing.