Previous World’s Worst Pollution reports have ranked pollution sources by the potential number of people at risk (2010) and created disease burden estimates for location-specific case studies (2011). This year’s report is the first attempt at creating a widespread estimate of disease burden attributable to toxic pollution from industrial sources. Previous estimates from these reports indicated that the at-risk population was in the range of 100 million people. Over the past year Blacksmith Institute’s extended efforts in new countries identified hundreds of more toxic pollution sites. Based on this work, we are certain that the types of issues we look.
