A US eco-report says two Russian cities pose a bigger danger to heath than Chernobyl.
The Blacksmith Institute has just published its list of the 10 most-polluted cities in the world. While Chinese and Indian industrial cities top the list, a couple of Russian towns have also been mentioned.
Ranked sixth was Dzerzhinsk, a city at the heart of the chemical industry in the Nizhny Novgorod region. Chemical waste in the rivers there has led to very high levels of water pollution.
Norilsk, a large Siberian mining hub in the Krasnoyarsk Region, was ranked seventh. Ecologists say the mining and smelting industry is the main polluter in the area.
Chernobyl, the scene of the 1986’s nuclear catastrophe, came only eighth.