Sumgayit declared second among world's most polluted cities following Chernobyl

Echo reports that four of them fall on the former Soviet Union.

Ukrainian Chernobyl leads the list. The area around the city is still polluted.

Sumgayit, the industrial center of Azerbaijan, is on the second place. Chemical enterprises, tube-rolling mills and aluminum  plant made this city the most polluted in the region.

Over 275,000 people reside there nowadays. Cases of poisoning by heavy metals, oil wastes and other chemical substances are not rare in this city. Children are born with such genetic abnormalities as mental retardation and bone diseases.

Two Russian cities are also on the list with Norisk in Krasnoyarsk taking the 6th place and Dzerzhinsk, a large center of chemical industry in Nijegorod, being 10th on the list.

Among the most polluted cities there are two cities in China, two in India, which are the centers of chemical and metallurgic industry. There are a Peruvian and Zambian cities where zinc, copper and lead are produced, on the list.

Over 12,000,000 people reside in 10 cities, fixed in the list of the Blacksmith Institute, BBC reports. Bad ecological situation causes cardiovascular diseases, asthma, respiratory diseases, premature birth and miscarriages among the population.