Norilsk, Russia

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Want a description of what absolute pollution looks like? In Norilsk, the snowfall is literally black. As the largest heavy metal smelting city in the world, it emits almost unfathomable amounts of copper and nickel oxide as well as sulphur dioxide. What that boils down to is an inhospitable zone where the air tastes like sulphur, chronic respiratory and pulmonary diseases abound and the average life expectancy is a decade short of the national average. While death rates are reputedly on the decline, Norilsk is still a veritable death-trap; somewhat fitting for a place which originally served as a Siberian slave labour camp. Isolated and hidden north of the Arctic Circle, there isn’t a living tree within 30 miles of this Russian city.

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