The Blacksmith Institute and Green Cross Switzerland have just issued a Top Ten list of the world’s most dangerous pollution problems (here and here). The report names pollution as one of the leading contributing factors to death and disability in the world and highlights its disproportionate effects on the health of children. The Top Ten are (in alphabetical order):
Artisanal Gold Mining
Contaminated Surface Water
Ground Water Contamination
Indoor Air Pollution
Industrial Mining Activities
Metals Smelters and Processing
Radioactive waste and Uranium Mines
Untreated Sewage
Urban Air Quality
Used Lead Acid Batteries
The Untreated Sewage page starts off talking about untreated sewage, but then gets on to sanitation, or rather the lack of it. So some confusion here! Why don’t they call a spade a spade? One of the Top Ten global pollutants, probably the Top One, must be human faeces.
About Me
- Duncan Mara
- University of Leeds, United Kingdom
- I'm an emeritus professor of civil engineering at the University of Leeds in England. I've been working on low-cost sanitation in developing countries since the mid-1970s, and also on low-cost wastewater treatment and reuse. I was a lecturer at the University of Nairobi, Kenya, 1970-73 and then a senior lecturer at the University of Dundee, Scotland, 1974-79 before moving to Leeds in late 1979. I was a visiting professor of sanitary engineering at the Universidade Federal da Paraiba in Campina Grande, northeast Brazil, during 1976-95, and since 1996 I have been a visiting professor of environmental engineering at the Instituto Cinara, Universidad del Valle in Cali, Colombia.