Areas that researchers have declared the most polluted in the world are typically little known even in their own countries. Yet they in total afflict more than 10 million people, experts reported today. The kinds of pollution in these areas not only lead to cancers, birth defects, mental retardation and life expectancies approaching medieval levels, but are also often found all around the globe. ‘They cause an enormous amount of misery and harm, especially to children,’ Richard Fuller, founder and director of the Blacksmith Institute, the New York-based environmental group who released a report on these areas today, told LiveScience. The Top 10 most polluted places for 2006, in alphabetical order by country: Linfen, China, where residents say they literally choke on coal dust in the evenings, exemplifies many Chinese cities; Haina, Dominican Republic, has severe lead contamination because of lead battery recycling, a problem common throughout poorer countries [image]; Ranipet, India, where leather tanning wastes contaminate groundwater with hexavalent chromium, made famous by Erin Brockovich, resulting in water that apparently stings like an insect bite [image]; Mailuu-Suu, Kyrgyzstan, home to nearly 2 million cubic meters of radioactive mining waste that threatens the […]