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America’s Most Toxic Town Is Not Where You Think

A small city in remote Alaska is working to reduce contamination from the nearby Red Dog Mine: “…The village has long had issues with the mine. Ore from Red Dog is transported by eighty-ton haul trucks along a 50-mile road that links the mine to a port on the Chukchi Sea south of Kivalina. There it’s stored in buildings, then transferred via barges to awaiting offshore bulk carrier ships. The haul road runs through a section of Cape Krusenstern National Monument. A 2001 National Park Service report documented elevated levels of lead, cadmium, and zinc in vegetation along the road, as well as near the storage area by the port. Concentrations of lead and cadmium, the National Park Service report stated, exceed levels found in “many of the most polluted countries in Central and Eastern Europe and all areas of western Russia.”

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