The Blacksmith Institute has released a new report on the world's most polluted places and there are, unfortunately, a lot of sites in Russia and the countries of the former Soviet Union on the list.

That's the bad news. The good news is that seven of the eight pollution clean-up success stories that Blacksmith cites are also in Russia.

Pollution takes a huge toll on the world's children, causing high rates of birth defects and infant mortality, high rates of asthma, cancer and other diseases, impairing brain functions and even causing them to be orphaned. In Dzerzhinsk, Russia, one of Blacksmith's 10 most polluted places, the average life expectancy is 42 years for men and 47 for women.

Dzerzhinsk is located in Nizhny Novgorod oblast east of Moscow. According to Blacksmith, Dzerzhinsk used to make many of Russia's chemical weapons and still is a center of chemical manufacturing. It says the city's own environmental agency acknowledges that 300,000 tons of chemical waste were dumped there between 1930 and 1998, leaving its groundwater--and that of nearby cities like Nizhny Novgorod--with dangerously high levels of dioxins and phenol.

What other Russian and former Soviet sites are on Blacksmith's list? You probably expected Chernobyl, in Ukraine, because of the nuclear accident there two decades ago. There is also Norilsk, a city in Krasnoyarsk krai that is home to much of the world's nickel mining. The top spot on the top ten though goes to Sumgayit, a city in Azerbaijan. Beyond the top 10, Blacksmith has found worrisome environments in Russia's Chita oblast, Rudnaya Pristan in Primorye krai, Bratsk in Irkutsk oblast and Magnitogorsk in Chelyabinsk oblast, as well as ones site each in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. You can read its full report on these and other sites here.

But as I said at the outset, Blacksmith also found reason for optimism. After seeing Blacksmith's data on lead contamination in children, the operator of a lead smelter in Rudnaya Pristan shut it. Children in the city are being tested and treated for lead poisoning. A non-governmental organization in Magadan has removed soil contaminated with radioactivity from a local beach and pesticides were removed from a leaky story facility in Nizhny Novgorod. There are other success stories here.

Blacksmith Institute was founded in 1999 to work on pollution problems in the developing world. It says its name was inspired by the work of a blacksmith "who, in a dirty environment, creates items that are practical, useful, and can stand the test of time." Its board of advisors, incidentally, includes Rock Brynner, son of the late actor Yul Brynner, who was born in Vladivostok.

Does the report mean that you should not consider adopting children from these polluted places? No. But it may help raise your awareness of the environmental factors that play into your child's medical history.

Image, credit: Dzerzhinsk, Blacksmith Institute

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