The World's Most Polluted Places Blackwell Summary

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Pollution is typically acknowledged as dangerous and as a contributing factor to the deterioration of the Earth. The most advanced nations in the world often have the greatest amounts of pollution — some of the most well-known are China, India, and the United States. People usually associate these areas with health risks, such as lung cancer, and contaminated air. However, in Visit Sunny Chernobyl And Other Adventures in the World’s Most Polluted Places by Andrew Blackwell, the author pinpoints the positive aspects of polluted locations. Blackwell finds beauty in the ruins and seems to gravitate toward some locations more than others; he also finds a message in one of his adventures that was more significant than the others. Blackwell went …show more content…

Blackwell says that his time on the boat is “remarkable for its long stretches of boredom” (page 130), and that “boredom creates such a powerful suction in the mind for anything interesting, anything new…” ( page 131). This shows that he does not enjoy the voyage to his destination because there is nothing for him to do for long durations of time. After the first week at sea, the narrator admits to spending “half [his] waking hours dreaming of land...a nice sidewalk, with the Doctor walking down it” (page 142). Blackwell is starting to loathe the sea because there is constant movement and also longs for the company of his fiancée. When the crew members decide to turn back after ten days, the author goes to the bowsprit which is “a good place for a morose crew member to cheer himself up” (page 154). It disappoints him to turn around without seeing their destination even though he experiences hardships over the course of his voyage. This adventure definitely does not go as planned for Blackwell, but it does allow him to encounter difficulties and deal with …show more content…

In Guiyi, the narrator sees how common electronic-recycling family businesses are despite “promises of cancer, nerve damage, and poisoned childhood development” (page 206). Blackwell introduces these health risks to display how the families must make sacrifices to be financially stable even if it threatens their well-being; the people causing pollution are also living in outrageous conditions just to survive. Then the author explores the most polluted places in the world, Linfen, to see if it lives up to its gruesome reputation but finds that he loves “the ruined places for all the ways they [are not] ruined” (page 226). This shows that Blackwell appreciates the little things in these ruined areas because some things surpass the destruction of pollution, such as the public square in Linfen. Later, the author goes to a coal mine and encounter the Sad Coal Man, but instead of being sad, “the not-so-sad coal men [are] lounging and chatting, resting in the sun, and playing with a visiting toddler” (page 239). Blackwell realizes that the speculations about these men are inaccurate, and the assumptions are to create the illusion that Linfen is as bad as people expect it to be. The main message he learns while on his adventures in China is that the places with large quantities of pollution also struggle in their own

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