The mother of all pollution tourism itineraries has got to be the the World’s Worst Polluted Places, from an environmental NGO called the Blacksmith Institute. Any yahoo can throw together a grab bag of besmirchments, but the folks at Blacksmith are professionals. Not only do they have hardcore technical criteria and serious brainpower behind their selection process; they also try to be representative, geographically and by type of pollution.
This is only the second year for what everyone hopes will be a yearly tradition (can’t wait ’till the 2008 list comes out). TIME did a nice little slideshow about the list when it came out, but the seriously interested will head for Blacksmith’s site. It has a map, extra photos, and tons of information—a veritable treasure trove for pollution tourists everywhere. As Blacksmith President Richard Fuller says in the accompanying TIME article, “…we forget that ordinary pollution is still something that destroys a lot of lives. These cities aren’t on the tourist trail.”
Give it time, Rich. Give it time.
Elsewhere on the interwebs, Popular Science has put up a pretty weak list called the World’s Dirtiest Cities. Considering the amount of overlap here, and the image grabs from Blacksmith’s site, the PopSci folks clearly started with the Blacksmith list, tossed out things that weren’t cities per se, and threw in Milan, Pittsburgh, and Mexico City for popular appeal. They’re already being convincingly taken apart in their own comments. True, from a site traffic point of view, putting Milan, Pittsburgh, and DF on there is totally pro. Just think of the thousands of residents of those cities who might click through to this slideshow out of sheer, outraged disbelief.
Otherwise, lame. PopSci ought at least to link back to Blacksmith, who are the original badboys of pollution destination rankings.
And what do the badboys tell us? China, India, and the former USSR are where the action is, with Africa and South America represented by one spot each. The suggestions I’ve received from helpful friends and horrified rubberneckers in the past couple years have followed pretty much the same distribution, which only gives Blacksmith that much more credibility in my eyes.
So far, I’ve only gotten to one of the ten listed sites. Got a lot of traveling to do.