In Conakry, the Blacksmith Institute, along with the Blacksmith Guinea representative organization Centre D'Appui au Develeppement (CAD), is on the verge of beginning a new project to stop the importation of leaded gasoline and encourage the use of unleaded gas. The goal of this project is to end the use of leaded gasoline in Guinea via the enactment of a law banning the importation of leaded gasoline and by developing and implementing policies that will make the use of unleaded gasoline cost-effective and practical.
Pollution kills, poisons, and otherwise impacts the lives of over a billion people, in particular children, every year.
Blacksmith Institute brings resources and expertise to local groups and agencies in developing countries to solve these problems, one site at a time.
Success Stories
Magadan Radioactive Remediation Project RUSSIA
The objective of this project is to begin remediation of the radioactively contaminated site via partial removal of contaminated soil, reinforcement of the slope, and the introduction of vegetation to stem run-off. The project is to be coordinated by a local NGO called Sodeistivie-Team Work with the BI's support. The Sanitary Epidemiological Surveillance of the city of Magadan and the Magadan branch of the Russian State Committee of Emergency Situations have approved partial remediation of the site's hot spots, terracing the slope to slow water run-off, and reinforcing it by planting foliage.
Success Stories
Water Treatment & Remediation Planning, Dzerzhinsk RUSSIA
Following the support of a baseline research project in the area in 2004, Blacksmith, in cooperation with the local government, will now fund the installation of a water treatment system in Pyra (population 4,000), a settlement whose groundwater is highly polluted, yet remains the sole source of drinking water. In addition, Blacksmith will fund the establishment of a steering committee led by a local NGO (DRONT) in cooperation with the Nizhniy Novgorod municipal government, to begin the design of a large-scale remediation and pollution mitigation plan for the entire affected area.
Success Stories
Hazardous Materials Legislation Project CAMBODIA
Blacksmith Institute funded and played a major role in coordinating this initiative. With help from Yale University's School of Law and School of Forestry joint program and New York University's Environmental Law Program, the project brought together the Ministries of Environment, Health, Industry, and Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry to draft an enforceable law that will prevent unregulated handling, importation and use of hazardous material. The law will serve to prevent and reduce any harm caused by hazardous chemicals to public health and the environment and improve control of importation, production, use and disposal of hazardous chemicals.
Success Stories
Bicchadi INDIA
This town in Rajasthan is now analyzing solutions to remediate its groundwater contamination. Severely contaminated with cancerous dyes and chemicals from defunct industries, the drinking water has been rendered highly toxic. This stakeholders group is a significant attempt to design and implement a solution to this problem. The National Environmental Engineering Research Institute has been assigned the task of cleaning the water.
Success Stories
Environmental Journalists Group MOZAMBIQUE
With the Blacksmith financial support, this project has spread information on environmental laws and regulations to the public and promoted debates about pollution at several levels. The programs produced were published on Radio Mozambique's two main channels, Antena Nacional and Radio Cidade. Programs consist of features, interviews, and news. Special target audiences have included people living in polluted areas - particularly in the urban and coastal areas and communities with high industrial activity and polluted waterways. Blacksmith has received transcripts of 6 radio programs aired by the group.
Blacksmith on CNN’s “Planet in Peril” documentary
CNN’s recent “Planet in Peril: Battlelines" documentary highlighted the case of La Oroya, Peru, which is on the Blacksmith Institute’s list of the worst polluted places in the world. Blacksmith experts visited the site most recently in May and issued a report on the cleanup efforts, noting improvements. The massive pollution is from a smelter run by the Doe Run Corporation. 99% of children in La Oroya have lead levels that exceed WHO permitted levels. The town also has high levels of cyanide and arsenic in the water and sulfur dioxide in the air. Blacksmith will continue monitoring La Oroya as Doe Run works to fully comply with pollution reduction measures.
Work Begins to Turn "Dominican Chernobyl" into Children's Playground
Clean up work has begun at Haina in the Dominican Republic, one of the world's most polluted hot spots, where some experts believe that the population has the highest level of lead poisoning in the world.
Blacksmith is digging up soil, contaminated with massive amounts of lead, and moving it to a safe storage location. Fresh soil will be laid down to make the land ready for conversion into a community playground.
Blacksmith currently has five technical experts on the ground managing the clean up, which is slated to be completed by the end of the year.
Counterpart Funding Committed for Clean Up of Arsenic Site in China
Local counterpart funding has now been assured for a project to stabilize arsenic waste on an abandoned mining site in Baiyizhai village to reduce contamination of rivers flowing through Wenshan County in Yunnan. The waste, high in arsenic content, remains after over four decades of mining operations, which ceased around 2002. Site work is expected to commence shortly.
Blacksmith Launches Its First Artisanal Gold Mining Project in Indonesia
Blacksmith Institute is supporting Kalimantan-based NGO YTS as it continues groundbreaking work initially undertaken by the Global Mercury Project. This project provides occupational health training for miners as they use retorts and other simple technologies to protect themselves and the environment from mercury vapors while extracting gold from ore. This training initiative is one of many Blacksmith hopes to implement in Indonesia, as mercury use by the artisanal mining community here is one of the highest in the world.
Water, Air and Soil Pollution Causes 40 percent of Deaths Worldwide
A recent research survey by Cornell University has concluded that 3.7 billion people are at risk because of pollution. Among the study’s main points.
* Air pollution from smoke and various chemicals kills 3 million people a year. In the U.S. alone about 3 million tons of toxic chemicals are released into the environment.
* Unsanitary living conditions account for more than 5 million deaths each year, of which more than half are children.
Nominate a Polluted Site
The Blacksmith Institute is expanding it's project database of polluted places around the world. Know about a location that is not on our list? Tell us about it. BI database includes over 400 critical sites, but not all contaminated sites have been identified. Once locations are assessed, BI can begin designing and implementing a remediation strategy using local champions to implement the project in a cooperative fashion. Pollution problems are individually solvable, and because they are finite in number, fixing all these issues is doable. So lets do it!