POLLUTION BLOG

This is the third year of the Strengthening Health Systems to Reduce Lead Exposure project, which is designing and implementing programs that identify, monitor, and reduce childhood lead exposure. Since 2023, Pure Earth, Vital Strategies, and local project partners have been...

In 2024, Pure Earth advanced efforts to elevate awareness of lead poisoning and drive government response through our Global Lead Program. The program measures progress across five key outcomes and related indicators. This blog series will highlight our 2024 results...

We are pleased to share our new report, Global Lead Program: 2024 Results and Achievements, which details the activities and accomplishments of Pure Earth's global, collective effort to reduce lead poisoning. The report also includes an annex listing key milestones achieved...

As part of the Strengthening Health Systems to Reduce Lead Exposure project, specialists from the National Institute of Public Health under the Ministry of Health of the Kyrgyz Republic are being trained in the use of modern Leadcare 2 equipment,...

Over the years, Pure Earth has cultivated and worked with a dedicated and highly skilled global network of professionals that we continue to call on for regional and specialized expertise. Recently, a group of our colleagues launched a new organization...

In 2021, Pure Earth launched an ambitious project to analyze the lead (Pb) content in thousands of consumer products in markets across 25 low- and middle-income countries. This project, the Rapid Market Screening (RMS),  is the first analysis of its...

2022 was a year of growth. Pure Earth programs doubled in size, enabling us to expand our focus on lead and mercury in the most impacted countries. As a result of this expansion, long-time Pure Earth officer Drew McCartor, who...

Pure Earth reached several milestones in 2021, including critical recognition as the most effective organization working today to solve the global childhood lead poisoning crisis! We are especially proud of this as it reflects the hard work put in by the...

In Tajikistan, in an area near the Afghan border lined with checkpoints and guards with guns, a Pure Earth team conducting pesticide cleanups was showered with hospitality. They were welcomed in home after home and were even invited to a...

What a difference a year makes. Last year, Pure Earth embarked on our first cleanup project in Azerbaijan---at a toxic beach along the Caspian sea in Sumgayit---in a region we had designated as one of the “World’s Worst Polluted Places.” Today,...

The Pure Earth family is sad to learn of the sudden death of Dmitriy Tereshkevich, our country director in Kazakhstan. He was just 33. His passing is a shock and a tremendous loss to everyone at Pure Earth worldwide, and to the...

This is Mrs. Mungun (not her real name), a single mother with two children living in Central Mongolia.  When times got tough for her, she became a "gold ninja" to feed her children. About 20% of the rural Mongolian workforce are "gold...

Over the past year, we have started to finally see a shift connecting the silos that have kept efforts on the environment, health and development in separate disciplines. The catalyst for much of this progress has come from the creation...

Read the story on Medium. This summer, when families return to stake out their spot in the sun along the coast of the Caspian sea in Sumgayit, Azerbaijan, there will be one crucial difference. The beach will no longer be toxic, and...

Beyond Akhtala, the site of our very first cleanup project in Armenia (read more in Armenia's Toxic 10th-Century Monastery), our team came across various other polluted sites including a school, which apparently had been used as an informal dumping ground by a...

The modern world has finally caught up with Akhtala, a historic town with a 10th-century monastery and church in Armenia. Years of mining and metals processing have provided jobs to the community, but at a grave cost.  The grounds of the historic...

"Fuller and Pure Earth (Blacksmith) have amassed an impressive record of success. But nothing could have prepared them for a situation like the decrepit Soviet dynamite* factory."  [*Note:  We want to clarify an error in the article.  It was not...

Just how hard is it to clean up a toxic polluted site sitting on top of a "bomb," at a secret site? This month's TCE magazine features the story behind our work dealing with one of the most dangerous examples...

This week’s post comes from Andrew McCartor, Blacksmith’s program director for Eastern Europe and Central Asia, who was recently in Mongolia.   There is no preparing for the Mongolian winter. When I stepped onto the tarmac in the capital city...

This week's post comes from Andrew McCartor, Blacksmith’s program director for Eastern Europe and Central Asia, who is currently in Tajikistan. The small, mountainous country of Tajikistan is a former Soviet republic that borders Afghanistan to the south and China...

Over 40% of the world's stockpiles of obsolete pesticides, around 200,000 tons, are estimated to be still present in the former Soviet Union Republics including Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Georgia, Moldova and Russian Federation. Blacksmith has been invited to join...

Stopping A Ticking Time Bomb In The Ukraine Keeping Radiation Out of Schools In Kyrgyzstan Groundbreaking Work In Armenia Blacksmith identified and assessed 128 contaminated sites in the region, bringing the total number of polluted communities documented in Eastern Europe and...

It's been 25 years since the meltown at Chernobyl and the abandoned town of Pripyat still echoes with tragedy.  Those of you who saw our virtual tour via our blog posts of April 4 and April 6 would already have...

Is nuclear power on your mind? Us too. As part of a site assessment trip to Ukraine, Pure Earth staff and technical advisers visited the world's worst nuclear disaster site. On April 26, 1986, a series of explosions occurred at...