NORILSK. Pollution Capital of the Arctic

It was a stormy night, and outside Norilsk's airport terminal I pulled up the hood of my parka against the bitter wind as I waited for a taxi into town. Despite its remote northern location, Norilsk is a major industrial centre with a population of 250,000. The town began as a prison camp back in 1935 after the discovery of substantial deposits of nickel, coal and copper. Hundreds of thousand of men and women prisoners were sent to this remote area. They lived in appalling conditions and endured Norilsk’s severe climate with winter temperatures as low as -56° Celsius and 130 days of blizzards each year, it is not surprising that over 20,000 of these slave labourers perished.

Today, Norilsk may be famous for its mineral wealth but it has also achieved considerable notoriety for having the worst air pollution of any town in Russia.