A street vendor sells fruit near the Sasol plant in Sasolburg, part of the region known as the Vaal Triangle, in South Africa, on Jan. 18.
Photographer: Leon Sadiki/BloombergWhat It’s Like to Live in the Most Polluted Place on Earth
The air in one South African industrial region is so contaminated that a town regularly registers the highest levels of harmful particulate emissions on the planet.
Just 30 miles from Johannesburg, in a South African region known as the Vaal Triangle, 1.7 million people are living in a crossfire of some of the most dangerous pollution on Earth.
From the highway into Vanderbijlpark, you can see the heavy veil of smoke that cloaks Africa’s biggest steel mill. To the southeast, near the town of Vereeniging, the Lethabo coal power plant, whose name means “happiness,” joylessly belches out ash and toxic sulfur dioxide. Further south, outside a petrochemicals plant in Sasolburg, an adjacent neighborhood regularly reeks of rotten eggs from hydrogen sulfide in the air.