The list of the places, in no particular order is:

1 Riachuelo Basin, Argentina

The Riachuelo Basin is a waterway whose name is synonymous with pollution. More than 3,500 factories operate along the banks of the river, a landscape that also includes 13 slums, numerous illegal sewage pipes running directly into the river, and 42 open garbage dumps.

2 Yamuna River, India

The Yamuna is the largest tributary of the Ganges River. Where it flows through Delhi, it’s estimated that 58 percent of the city’s waste gets dumped straight into the river. Millions of Indians still rely on these murky, sewage-filled waters for washing, waste disposal and drinking water.

3 Chernobyl, Ukraine

Chernobyl is the town in northern Ukraine home to the Chernobyl disaster of 1986, the worst nuclear power plant accident in history. Once home to more than 14,000 residents, the town remains mostly uninhabited and unsafe today due to extensive radioactive contamination.

4 La Oroya, Peru

La Oroya is a soot-covered mining town in the Peruvian Andes. Ninety-nine percent of the children who live here have blood levels that exceed acceptable limits for lead poisoning, which can be directly attributed to an American-owned smelter that has been polluting the city since 1922.

5 Haiti

The nation of Haiti was once 60 percent covered in forest. Today, only 2 percent of the country still has standing trees. This picture shows an aerial of the border between Haiti (left) and the Dominican Republic (right). Haiti has cleared almost every tree right up to its borders.

Other toxic places are:

6 Citarum River, Indonesia

7 Linfen, China

8 The North Pacific Gyre

9 Rondônia, Brazil

10 Lake Karachay, Russia

11 Kabwe, Zambia

12 Appalachia, West Virginia

13 Dzerzhinsk, Russia

14 Vapi, India

15 Earth’s orbit

Image to link: MNN

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