The Most Toxic Places on Earth: You’ll Never Believe it

3. Kabwe, Zambia

Kabwe in Zambia used to be a very good mining hub, but it’s among the most polluted areas at the moment. For more than a century lead and zinc mining here left a bad legacy for the people through toxic remnants: lead, cadmium, zinc, and copper have remained in the air, water, and ground. Poisoning from lead, particularly, from lead is alarming, for children over tenfold compared with the permissible. Even with such global organizations as the World Bank investing in cleanup operations, progress remains low mainly because of local resistance to disclosing the extent of the pollution.