US Study: No Pollution Hotspots in the Arab World

A recent study was released by the US organization Blacksmith Institute has documented what it considers to be the top pollution hotspots in the World. The first list includes the top 10 sites while another list adds 25 other sites that requiring swift action, as the institution says.

Heavy metals such as lead are the main sources of pollution, with 10 million people affected across the locations.

The institute surveyed scientists and environmental bodies across the world to compile its list, and is running clean-up projects in some of the sites.

"A particular concern of all these cases is the accumulating and long lasting burden building up in the environment and in the bodies of the people most directly affected," said the institute's director Richard Fuller. "There are places where life expectancy approaches medieval rates, where birth defects are the norm not the exception, where children's asthma rates are measured above 90%, and where mental retardation is endemic," the report says.

"In countries where life expectancies may be half that of the richest nations, the unfortunates in these areas do not even survive that long or if they do, it is in suffering."

The lists do not include any site in the Arab World which might be a god relief and a piece of data that Arab governments can distribute in their favor. I wonder if the reason is lack of documented information rather than lack of hotspots themselves.

However it is interesting to take a look at the full list of sites that can be found here

http://www.blacksmithinstitute.org/top10/worst35d.html