29 Most Toxic Places On Earth

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Pesarean, Indonesia

Source: http://www.pureearth.org/

Pesarean, a province in Central Java, is home to a thousand people whose primary source of income is from working in recycle smelters. Large-scale industrial smelters are equipped to safely extract lead from automobile batteries, but in the tiny villages of Pesarean, there are hundreds of smaller operators who smelt lead without safety precautions or concern for environmental regulations. Fire pits where batteries are burned leave piles of ash, turning the soil grey. Even the water from the village creek is grey, and black toxic waste spills into a larger stream that waters the rice fields and contaminates the crops. These small-scale operations are responsible for the emission of hazardous lead particulate into the environment, polluting the soil, groundwater, and air. Families exposed to years of smelting have high levels of lead in their blood, and lead poisoning has devastating effects mostly on children, causing irreversible damage to developing brains.