The lead smelter has now voluntarily shut down, after Blacksmith presented the owner with data on the health risks to children of lead contamination. In addition, children’s blood lead levels are being tested, and those with elevated levels are being treated with Blacksmith funding. This town in the Russian Far East was one of the first lead smelters in the country, and has left a legacy of contamination throughout the town. Blacksmith has also supported a program of education to all residents, and local education and testing through the community is ongoing. Now, a plan to remediate the worst of the contamination needs to be drawn up and implemented.

Once heavily contaminated with mercury, this neighborhood’s water supply has now been cleaned up with Blacksmith support. One of the most popular tourist areas of Vladivostok, Popov Island had mercury contamination over 40 times EPA limits. Hundreds of broken thermometers had been thrown into the water tank, and the mercury had leached and contaminated the supply pipes throughout the town. Blacksmith funded a joint program with local authorities to replace contaminated piping and tanks, and now the water supply is mercury free.

The highly radioactively contaminated riverbanks and sediments of the village swimming hole have now been cleaned up. A spill from the Mayak plutonium facility in the late ‘60s released four times the amount of radioactivity into this river as was released by the Chernobyl accident. 98 percent of the population suffers from chronic and genetic diseases. The riverbank and sediment still showed very high levels of radioactivity, and Blacksmith funded a local partner to dig and remove these soils, and replace with clean soils. The radioactive soils were deposited in a safe place away from human contact, and covered again with clean soil.

About 2.5 tons of DDT and other obsolete pesticides were removed from a leaky storehouse in the center of town and taken to a safe storage area. Blacksmith Institute funded the local government to safely package and transport these dangerous chemical to safe storage, away from the schools and markets where they were previously stored.

About four tons of various pesticides have been packaged and removed from open and leaky storage, where they were contaminating ground and surface water. Blacksmith funded the local government through a local NGO to safely remove these chemicals.

Soil contaminated with radioactivity on the main beach of Magadan has now been removed. Highly toxic hotspots from a factory now long closed were left behind on the beach and surrounds of this town in the Russian Far east. Blacksmith funded a local NGO to carefully monitor and remove these hotspots, transporting some 50 tons of dirt and contamination to a safe disposal facility.

As part of the Dzerzhinsk strategy, Blacksmith has funded a water treatment plant for Pyra, a neighborhood with very poor groundwater. This neighborhood now has clean drinking water.

Blacksmith Institute pioneered the successful treatment of groundwater contaminated by hexavalent chromium in India. Hexavalent chromium is highly carcinogenic, and was used in the tannery industry to preserve leather hides. Kanpur is a center of the tanning industry in India, and certain neighborhoods are contaminated with the toxin to very high levels. The trial program, partnered with the Central Pollution Control Board, involved injecting chemicals into the groundwater that react with the toxic hexavalent version of chromium, thus enabling it to bind to the rock and keep from contaminating water. The trial was successful, with levels of hexavalent chromium in some of the test wells dropping to non-detectable levels. Now, this process needs to be undertaken throughout the entire site, a project that is in planning stages.

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.

The “Golden Corridor” of industry in Gujarat hosts thousands of chemical, textiles petrochemicals, fertilizers and pharmaceutical industries. Highly polluted, and highly populous, the region faces a number of challenges at it begin to improve the lives of its inhabitants. Blacksmith has promoted the establishment of a stakeholders group, including all government agencies, NGOs and community representatives to examine specific sites, determine appropriate solutions, and initiate clean-up activity. So far the group has reviewed five sites and continues to expand its scope and to initiate change.

A study of the impact of lead contamination, and a plan for remediation has been drawn up with Blacksmith’s support. This populous neighborhood of Kolkata houses a dozen battery recycling outfits, and lead contamination throughout the region is extensive and dangerous. The study will help to focus government efforts to upgrade or move these industries, and to remediate the area.

A stakeholder group has also been constituted to come up with solutions to deal with the pollution from the lead smelters.

Asbestos contamination threatening the lives of this remote community is under planning for containment and safe disposal by a stakeholders group initiated and funded by Blacksmith institute. The hills around Roro are literally covered with asbestos dumped from extinct industry, and children play soccer and toboggan amongst the white landscape. Needless to say, lung cancers and other respiratory problems within the region are sky high. This stakeholders group, working with all key agencies, is the first effort initiated in this region to design a solution to this extensively contaminated area.

As of January 2007, 5 tons of vermicast have been applied in the polluted GIDC patch to acclimatize the EM culture. With more rains, more vermiculture and mulch will be added. The project has been fully successful, and the site continues to be monitored by local groups. Plans for a mini forestry on the polluted patch of land have been in recent discussions.

With funding and technical support from Blacksmith, the Government of Guinea has ratified a ban on the selling and importation of leaded gasoline. The implementation of the project involved: the Ministry of Mines, Geology and Environment, the Ministry of Public Health, the Ministry for Hydraulics and Energy, the Ministry for Transport and Public Works, the Ministry for Trade, Industry, Small and Medium-sized Business, and various industry groups such as the Guinean Oil company (SGP), the Grouping of Professionals of the Oil of Guinea (GPPG), and Service Health Safety and Environment of Shell (SSSES). The strategy was based on a Blacksmith facilitated national task force under the coordination of the Permanent Secretariat of the National Council of Environment (CNE). This task force was responsible for developing and passing the legislation.

Because of recent political turmoil in the country no PCB container has yet been constructed.

Blacksmith initiated the first in a series of appropriate technology demonstrations to reduce mercury emissions associated with small-scale mining in Mozambique. Members of the United Nations Global Mercury Project traveled to Mozambique to provide technical assistance to officials from the government and mining communities by engaging in active demonstrations, discussion and analysis. By teaching miners how to use retort technology, exposure to toxic mercury vapors has been reduced as well as the release of mercury into the environment.

With funding and technical support from the Blacksmith Institute, the Government of Mozambique has ratified a ban on the selling and importation of leaded gasoline. Blacksmith Institute initiated and has supported this initiative since 2001 with funds and technical assistance. Blacksmith helped create the Mozambique Leaded Gasoline Task Force, made up of representatives from Mozambique's Ministry of Health, Ministry for the Coordination of Environmental Affairs (MICOEA), and the Ministry of Mines, Resources and Energy, which designed and implemented a plan to completely phase out the use of leaded gasoline by mid-2005.

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; they are now available online. Topics include: Cholera and Leaded Gasoline.

Blacksmith has enabled local partners to help six factories, among ten industrial polluters in this residential area of Dar es Salaam, to either construct or repair their waste treatment systems, while two others have replaced manufacturing with assembly and modification. Before these changes took place, four different waste streams ran through residences and local water sources on their way to the Indian Ocean. Blacksmith plans to expand this program to other areas of Dar es Salaam.

Blacksmith Institute has supported the Government of Tanzania to ratify a ban on the selling and importation of leaded gasoline. The government of Tanzania developed a leaded gas phase-out action plan and it was discussed at a Blacksmith supported national stakeholders' meeting in Dar es Salaam in September, 2003.

At Blacksmith’s urging, the World Bank has committed significant funding to remove toxic lead from the soil of this city of 300,000 people. Legacy pollution from a lead mine has poisoned the city, rendering its population severely sick and incapacitated from chronic lead exposure. While providing independent oversight for the World Bank clean-up, Blacksmith will also continue its successful 4 year old awareness program for citizens to mitigate their exposure through everyday activities.

Blacksmith is working with NGOs, the local administration and industry to reduce pollution of the Kafue River from copper mines, metallurgical plants, textile plants, fertilizer factories, sugar processing plants, cement factories, various agricultural activities, and the Kafue Sewage Treatment Plant (KSTP). The Kafue River, part of the Zambezi basin, is a source of potable water for over forty percent of Zambia's population. For decades, Mineral deposits, chemicals, and suspended solids have led to overgrowth of aquatic weeds, choking river life. By helping the coalition to implement the reduction and reuse of effluent streams and more thorough wastewater treatment, the River is on its way to recovery.

After several years of effort, Greener Beijing, an environmental NGO, succeeded in putting pollution from illegal mining and industry in Inner Mongolia onto the national agenda in mid-2005. Blacksmith Institute has been supporting Greener Beijing since 2002 to work on this issue and assist local communities affected by pollution to gain compensation. Subsequently, a large-scale paper mill that was one of the chief polluters in the area was shut down, but without cleaning up the toxic benzene that has contaminated local groundwater. Blacksmith Institute plans to fund a remediation program at this site and medical treatment for the affected local population.

The Yunnan Environment Protection Bureau has been working with the village committee of Fubao village, situated just outside the provincial capital of Kunming, to develop a composting and dual waste collection system to reduce pollution from agricultural chemicals into nearby Lake Dianchi. Through this recently completed Blacksmith Institute funded project, which over 70% of village households are participating in, the amount of waste that has to be sent to landfill has been reduced by around 40%, as well as decreases in the amount of chemical fertilisers being used.

With funding from Blacksmith Institute, the Royal Cambodian government formed stakeholder task forces that brought together several government agencies and technical experts to draft two national environmental codes. The first was legislation controlling the management of hazardous materials, and the second was a set of technical guidelines for monitoring urban air quality. Adoption of these codes will make a significant contribution to reducing pollution in Cambodia.

Successful introduction of simple retorts to recycle mercury at the Prey Meas goldmine. Retorts were made in the area and local craftsmen were trained to make and use them. Blacksmith also measured severe bacterial contamination in the community drinkingwater well and provided a ceramic water filter that removes all bacteria.

The Marilao, Meycauyan and Obando river system is home to hundreds of thousands of people and numerous industries, most of which pump their wastewater untreated into the river. Carcinogenic hexavalent chromium, lead, and human sewage are just a few components of this toxic stew, which the local population relies on as a source of domestic and agricultural water. With support from Blacksmith Institute, a multi-stakeholder group with representatives from local NGOs, government, academia, and industry has been formed to scope the extent of pollution, and design of suitable responses is well under way.