Translate page with Google

Pulitzer Center Update May 31, 2017

This Week: The World’s Most Toxic Town

Country:

Media: Author:
Media file: kabwe.jpg
English

Years of unmitigated contamination from Zambia's largest lead mine have created a toxic nightmare...

Lead levels in Kabwe are as much as 100 times recommended safety levels. Image by Larry C. Price. Zambia, 2017.
Lead levels in Kabwe are as much as 100 times recommended safety levels. Image by Larry C. Price. Zambia, 2017.

The World's Most Toxic Town

Larry C. Price and Damian Carrington

For almost a century, the town of Kabwe in Zambia heavily mined and smelted lead. Although the town’s state-owned smelter closed in 1994, its legacy will be felt for generations to come.  Photographer Larry Price and The Guardian’s Environment Editor Damian Carrington visited Kabwe, where they found children playing in the contaminated dust and adults toiling in the toxic slag heap left behind by the smelters. Larry’s photographs reveal a community that has made little effort to clean up the environmental catastrophe—the children whose lives will bear its scars for the rest of their lives.

Delvid Santos Melo prepares to receive a yellow fever immunization from clinic worker Tielly Barboga de Souza. Image by Mark Hoffman. Brazil, 2017.
Delvid Santos Melo prepares to receive a yellow fever immunization from clinic worker Tielly Barboga de Souza. Image by Mark Hoffman. Brazil, 2017.

Climate Change Collides With an Epidemic 

Mark Johnson

After a prolonged drought, Brazilians thought returning rains would end a nightmare—they didn’t expect it to bring on a new crisis. Mark Johnson of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel traveled to Brazil to look at the effects of the country’s worst Yellow Fever outbreak, intensified by the drought that preceded it.

The Louvre Abu Dhabi dome and the site of the Guggenheim’s troubled project. Image by Knut Egil Wang. UAE, 2016
The Louvre Abu Dhabi dome and the site of the Guggenheim’s troubled project. Image by Knut Egil Wang. UAE, 2016

Moving to the Gulf

Negar Azimi and Knut Egil Wang

Kerala, India, has been a source of labor for the United Arab Emirates’ ambitious building projects for years. Negar Azimi found the UAE’s cultural and economic influence across Kerala, as whole villages empty of men moving to the Gulf for work.

RELATED TOPICS

Trade

Topic

Trade

Trade
navy halftone illustration of a female doctor with her arms crossed

Topic

Health Inequities

Health Inequities
a yellow halftone illustration of a seal with a plastic net around its neck

Topic

Pollution

Pollution