AssA-Irada,
13, September 2007

Azerbaijan's industrial town Sumgayit has been included in the list of the world's 10 most polluted regions.

The institute identified sites in seven countries affecting some 12 million people as the areas with the worst pollution levels. Sumgayit was cited alongside such hotspots as Ukraine's town of Chernobyl, which was hit by a horrendous industrial accident in 1986, as well as Russia's towns of Dzerzinsk and Norilsk, in the World's Worst Polluted Places 2007 report released by US-based environmental charity Blacksmith Institute.

The list also included La Oroya, Peru, Kabwe, Zambia as well as China's Linfen (the heart of China's coal industry) and Tianjin, and India's Sukinda and Vapi.

Sumgayit was an industrial center during the Soviet era, in manufacturing rubber, chlorine, aluminum, detergents and pesticides. While the factories remained fully operational, 70-120,000 tons of harmful emissions were released into the air annually. With the emphasis placed on maximum, low-cost production at the expense of environmental and occupational health and safety, industry has left the city heavily contaminated. Factory workers and residents of the city have been exposed to a combination of high-level occupational and environmental pollution problems for several decades, the Blacksmith Institute said.

As for health impacts, the report said Sumgayit had one of the highest morbidity rates during the Soviet Era and the legacy of illness and death persist.

Extensive activities have been carried out under the state program on socio-economic development of the regions to improve the environmental situation in Sumgayit, and provide amenities. In any case, it is unfair to cite the town alongside such disastrous areas as Chernobyl, which was hit by a nuclear power plant explosion, making life there virtually impossible.