The most polluted city on earth

Posted by David Roberts at 4:45 PM on 03 Apr 2007

Read more about: air pollution | China | water pollution

For story: The most polluted city on earth
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There's are good reasons...

...that I couldn't continue working in China, or living in Hong Kong, anymore. Waking up every morning with a hacking cough and tearing eyes was probably the biggest.

On one of my last working trips to Beijing, it started raining mud, something I'd seen in China a couple of times before, but not that bad. You couldn't see out an autoobile's front window - the windshield wipers just smeared the mud, and after you got out of the car, in seconds you covered in this awful black... well, shit. It was like being on the set of a low-budget, badly-plotted film about a future catastrophic ecological disaster, except that it was real, and already happening.

My candidate for the damn awful worst most polluted place on the planet prize would go to Lanzhou, in Gansu Provice (east of Shanxi, where Linfen is). Trust me, yo don't want to go there.

Robert Delfs

by Robert Delfs at 7:13 PM on 03 Apr 2007

I was listening to NPR this morning

about a trip down the Ganges river. They were standing on the bank talking about the discharge from a tanning factory when a human body floated by... shiver.

In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

by biodiversivist at 10:25 PM on 03 Apr 2007

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