Results: Toxic Towns
Published on 02/29/2020
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1.
Dangerously unfit for human habitation, a number of settlements around the world remain strictly off-limits, ranging from once-thriving cities contaminated with radiation to desolate villages riddled with asbestos, anthrax and explosives. Please click on any of the areas you have lived near.
Gilman, Colorado, USA - The town was abandoned in 1984 by order of the Environmental Protection Agency, which detected dangerous levels of contaminants in soil and groundwater.
4%
94 votes
Pripyat, Kiev Oblast, Ukraine - The world's worst nuclear disaster occurred at the plant on 26 April 1986, when Reactor 4 exploded, spewing clouds of toxic fallout over the city and across large swathes of Europe.
6%
137 votes
Centralia, Pennsylvania, USA - On 27 May 1962, the town's landfill, which was sitting atop an old strip mine, was set alight. The blaze soon spread to the deeper coal mines beneath the town and the inferno quickly spiraled out of control. Smoke and poisonous gases billowed from fissures that had opened up in the ground and residents had begun falling ill. (Pictured)
7%
161 votes
Not Applicable
86%
2050 votes
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Again, please click on any of the areas you have lived near.
Wittenoom, Pilbara, Australia - The town owed its existence to a mine that employed most of the adult residents. As health concerns surrounding asbestos grew, the mine was shut down in 1966, but the closure came too late for many of the town's residents.
3%
69 votes
Picher, Oklahoma, USA - In 1972, contaminated water began to seep from the mines and efforts were made to decontaminate the town, but to little avail.
3%
83 votes
Namie, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan - Located downwind from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, Namie was evacuated and declared a no-go zone after a devastating earthquake and tsunami ravaged the surrounding region on 11 March 2011, causing three catastrophic meltdowns at the plant. (Pictured)
5%
127 votes
Not Applicable
90%
2138 votes
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Lastly, please click on any of the areas you may have lived near.
New Idria, California, USA - Concerns over contamination in the area began building in the 1990s and since then, worrying levels of mercury and other toxic metals have been detected in the town and downstream of the former mine.
3%
76 votes
Kantubek, Vozrozhdeniya Island, Uzbekistan - Previously one of the world's largest biological-warfare testing facilities, the top-secret complex was operational until the early 1990s. (Pictured)
4%
92 votes
Geamana, Lupsa, Romania - Flooding almost all of the village, a horrifying toxic cocktail of heavy metal pollutants seeped into the valley from the late 1970s onward.
2%
54 votes
Not Applicable
92%
2182 votes
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