13 toxic towns that people have fled

These contaminated communities are seriously hazardous

Dangerously unfit for human habitation, a number of settlements around the world remain strictly off-limits, ranging from once-thriving cities contaminated with radiation to desolate villages riddled with asbestos, anthrax and explosives.

Read on to take a tour of the world's most toxic towns... 

East Palestine, Ohio, USA

Prior to 2023, East Palestine was a sleepy village in Columbiana County, Ohio – a world away from the international spotlight. A community of some 4,761 encompassing just over three square miles (8sqkm), it was founded in 1828 and today comprises a high street, park and residential neighbourhoods.

However, the village's peaceful anonymity was shattered when a disaster devastated the close-knit settlement, leaving locals feeling unsafe in their own homes...

East Palestine, Ohio, USA

In February 2023, a Norfolk Southern cargo train travelling to Conway, Pennsylvania suffered a mechanical problem and derailed as it passed through East Palestine. Around 50 cars came off the tracks and burst into flames, and while no one was injured in the initial aftermath of the incident, the contents of the train were cause for extreme concern.

11 of the cars were carrying hazardous materials and first responders discovered that one of the train cars was releasing vinyl chloride, used to make PVC, into the atmosphere. A known carcinogen, exposure to the chemical can reportedly lead to health issues ranging from headaches and nausea to more serious, long-term illnesses such as liver cancer.

East Palestine, Ohio, USA

Two days after the incident on 5 February, evacuation orders were given to hundreds of residents near the site of the derailment. Given the cocktail of hazardous materials aboard the train, a potential explosion could send shrapnel into many of East Palestine's residential neighbourhoods.

Ohio governor Mike DeWine urged reluctant locals to relocate: "You need to leave, you just need to leave. This is a matter of life and death," he told the community.

East Palestine, Ohio, USA

Work crews carried out a controlled burn to avert the risk of a devastating explosion. Toxic chemicals, including vinyl chloride and butyl acrylate, were slowly released into the air from five rail cars. Other potentially harmful substances, including benzene and ethyl hexyl acrylate, were also present on the train. As the hazardous materials burned, a dark plume of smoke was seen rising ominously over East Palestine, dominating the horizon.

Locals affected by the derailment initiated a class action lawsuit against Norfolk Southern and in April 2024 the rail operator agreed to pay a $600 million (£488m) settlement, while not admitting to liability or wrongdoing.

Gilman, Colorado, USA

Perched on a steep cliff above Eagle River in Eagle County, Colorado, the ghost town of Gilman was established in 1886 during the Colorado Silver Boom and had a population of several hundred by the early 20th century.

The nearby Eagle Mine was the state's leading producer of silver for decades, but by the early 1930s, the mainstay of the town's economy was zinc and lead mining.

Gilman, Colorado, USA

The population of the town, which had a post office, grocery store and even a bowling alley, remained at several hundred up until 1977 when the main mine ceased operations.

The town was eventually abandoned in 1984 by order of the Environmental Protection Agency, which detected dangerous levels of contaminants in soil and groundwater.

Gilman, Colorado, USA

Parts of Gilman remain toxic to this day, including the old mine. It has noxious levels of arsenic, cadmium, copper, lead and zinc. A proposal to fast-track clean-up operations and transform the site into a ski resort fell through in 2009.

The town, which is privately owned and sprawls over 235 acres (95ha), has been allowed to fall into rack and ruin.

Gilman, Colorado, USA

The majority of Gilman's structures, many of which have historical value, have been vandalised, so much so that almost every window in the town has been broken.

Though strictly off-limits to the general public, Gilman has become a haven for explorers and photographers, as well as graffiti artists and vandals.

Centralia, Pennsylvania, USA

Pictured in 1981, the picture-perfect Pennsylvania coal mining town of Centralia hides a dark secret. In mysterious circumstances on 27 May 1962, the town's landfill, which was sitting atop an old strip mine, was set alight.

The blaze soon spread to the deeper coal mines beneath the town and the inferno quickly spiralled out of control.

Centralia, Pennsylvania, USA

Locals only became aware of the full extent of the blaze in 1979 and it wasn't until 1981 when a resident fell into a sinkhole that the fire hit the headlines. By this time, smoke and poisonous gases were billowing from fissures that had opened up in the ground and residents had begun falling ill.

Centralia, Pennsylvania, USA

Realising the subterranean fire was out of control and almost impossible to quell, Congress allocated millions of dollars for relocation efforts in 1983. By 1990, the majority of the town's householders had been bought out, reducing the population from well over 1,000 to just 63.

More than 500 properties were razed to the ground and in 2006 only a few homes remained, including this unstable row house.

Centralia, Pennsylvania, USA

Famous for all the wrong reasons, the creepy abandoned town provided the inspiration for survival horror video game Silent Hill. These days just a handful of structures and fewer than a dozen stubborn residents remain in the condemned town, which is out of bounds to newcomers.

Experts believe the hellish fire could burn for at least another 100 years.

Wittenoom, Pilbara, Australia

The company town of Wittenoom in Western Australia's Pilbara region had a population of around 20,000 in the early 1960s, when the bustling spot was home to a cinema, two schools and a swish hotel.

The town owed its existence to a nearby blue asbestos mine that employed most of the adult residents.

Wittenoom, Pilbara, Australia

As health concerns surrounding asbestos grew, the mine was shut down in 1966, but the closure came too late for many of the town's residents.

To date, more than 2,000 people have died from asbestos-related diseases according to the Asbestos Diseases Society of Australia, while the mine's ex-workers are at risk of dying prematurely from asbestosis, lung cancer or mesothelioma.

Wittenoom, Pilbara, Australia

Despite its deadly terrain, the town's closure wasn't announced until the late 1970s, when the State Government started buying up and demolishing properties.

During the 1980s and early 1990s, the bulk of the town's structures were pulled down, and the hotel was finally bulldozed in 1996.

Wittenoom, Pilbara, Australia

Regarded as the most contaminated site in the southern hemisphere, Wittenoom, which has been dubbed 'Australia's Chernobyl', was wiped off official maps and disconnected from the power grid in 2007.

Three die-hard permanent residents still lived in the former town until they were evicted in 2022, shortly after the Wittenoom Closure Bill passed. In 2023, the town was largely demolished and the roads leading to it were blocked to deter trespassers. However, the surrounding area is still contaminated by asbestos waste.

Picher, Oklahoma, USA

The Tri-State Mining District town of Picher was established in the early 20th century around the eponymous lead and zinc mine and was incorporated in 1918.

A bustling hive of activity, the town's thriving population peaked at 14,252 in 1926, but it wouldn't stay that way for long.

Picher, Oklahoma, USA

Mining operations declined in the latter half of the 20th century and halted in 1967. In 1972, contaminated water began to seep from the mines and efforts were made to decontaminate the town, but to little avail.

By 2006, the state had begun relocating residents and buying out homes and businesses.

Picher, Oklahoma, USA

Adding to Picher's woes and sealing its fate, an F4 tornado hit the town in May 2008. The twister claimed the lives of eight people and levelled scores of buildings, while causing irreparable damage to countless others.

Following the tornado, the majority of residents vacated the town for good.

Picher, Oklahoma, USA

By 2013, a large proportion of the condemned town's buildings had been demolished, while suspected arson attacks in 2015 and 2017 gutted Picher's mining museum and church. Despite the contamination, Gary Linderman, the owner of the town's Ole Miner Pharmacy, vowed to stay there until the bitter end.

Picher's last official resident died in June 2015 and the town's population was subsequently recorded at zero.

Namie, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan

Located downwind from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, Namie was evacuated and declared a no-go zone after a devastating earthquake and tsunami ravaged the surrounding region on the 11th March 2011, causing three catastrophic meltdowns at the plant.

Namie, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan

Before the disaster, Namie had a population of over 20,000. Located within the 12-mile (19km) exclusion zone, the town remained completely out of bounds and eerily silent until April 2012, when the authorities divided it into three zones based on their levels of radioactive contamination.

Namie, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan

Former residents were allowed to visit Zone A, located closest to the coast, but weren't permitted to stay overnight. They could visit Zone B for very brief periods, but Zone C, the most contaminated of the lot, remained closed off, with access strictly forbidden.

Namie, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan

As clean-up operations have progressed, Zones A and B were declared safe in April 2017 and former residents were allowed to return, but many have chosen to stay away.

In February 2023, Namie and the surrounding region suffered a 4.9 magnitude earthquake, setting reopening efforts back somewhat. But, in June 2024, decontamination works started in the town.

New Idria, California, USA

New Idria in northern California's Diablo Mountain Range was founded in 1854 to house workers who toiled away in the adjacent mercury mine, which went on to become one of America's chief producers of the metal. It's pictured here in 1910.

By the mid-20th century, the town was a bustling community and had a number of shops, a post office, a school and a church.

New Idria, California, USA

The mine closed down in 1972 leading to a mass exodus of workers and their families. Its livelihood stripped away, New Idria fast became a deserted ghost town.

Concerns over contamination in the area began building in the 1990s and since then, worrying levels of mercury and other toxic metals have been detected in the town and downstream of the mine.

New Idria, California, USA

In 2010, a fire ripped through buildings on the settlement's north side and two years later the south side of the town was fenced off.

Despite this, several former residents were known to visit periodically during this time, including the last mining supervisor Mark Ward, who would travel to the site with his wife and son to repair damaged structures.

New Idria, California, USA

Clean-up operations were conducted in 2012 and 2015 but the site remains toxic and uninhabitable. In addition to mercury and heavy metal contaminants, a large tract of land south of New Idria has been deemed an Asbestos Hazard Area.

This is one place in sunny California you definitely want to steer clear of.

Kantubek, Vozrozhdeniya Island, Uzbekistan

Situated on Vozrozhdeniya Island, aka anthrax island, in the now dried-up Aral Sea, Kantubek was a town that housed 1,500 Soviet scientists and their families. The scientists were employees of the notorious Aralsk-7 lab complex nearby.

Previously one of the world's largest biological warfare testing facilities, the top-secret complex was operational until the early 1990s.

Kantubek, Vozrozhdeniya Island, Uzbekistan

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the entire lab complex was relocated to the city of Kirov within the newly created Russian Federation. Kantubek became a sinister ghost town and one of the most toxic on the planet.

Vozrozhdeniya Island was reduced to a dumping ground for the Soviet Union's enormous cache of deadly anthrax.

Kantubek, Vozrozhdeniya Island, Uzbekistan

Toxic anthrax slurry was dumped in pits there during the 1980s. After the island was abandoned, security became non-existent and governments around the world grew concerned that terrorist organisations or hostile regimes could get hold of the toxins.

To deal with the problem, the US funded a multimillion-dollar clean-up operation in 2002.

Kantubek, Vozrozhdeniya Island, Uzbekistan

The US-sponsored clean-up neutralised the vast cache of anthrax, but there are still fears over the safety of the island, which was also a testing ground for weaponised smallpox, bubonic plague and more, with locals avoiding the site at all costs.

Tyneham, Dorset, UK

Dating back to the early Middle Ages, the chocolate-box village of Tyneham, which is known as Dorset's 'lost' village, was requisitioned by the British Army just before Christmas of 1943 for military training, along with 7,500 acres (3,035ha) of surrounding countryside.

Pictured here is the village's quaint school.

Tyneham, Dorset, UK

With heavy hearts, the village's 225 inhabitants were evacuated and relocated. The last person to leave pinned a note on the door of the church requesting the Army to “treat the houses and church with care”.

Needless to say, the request wasn't honoured in its entirety, with many of the buildings, including the post office, more or less reduced to ruins.

Tyneham, Dorset, UK

Despite reassurances that the villagers would be allowed to return to their homes after the Second World War, the Army placed a compulsory purchase order on the land in 1952.

Today, the area continues to be used as a military training ground, though the public is allowed to visit on weekends and during the month of August.

Tyneham, Dorset, UK

Fortunately, the church and schoolhouse have been preserved and were converted into museums some time ago.

Visitors have to take extra care though and are urged to stay on designated footpaths due to the many unexploded bombs and shells that litter the area.

Geamana, Lupsa, Romania

Once a charming rural idyll, Geamana was situated in a deep forested valley in Transylvania's Carpathian Mountains.

Home to around 400 families, their lives were turned upside down in 1977 when Romania's communist regime, led by Nicolae Ceausescu, decided to exploit the copper reserves of the nearby Rosia Poieni mine on a bewildering scale.

Geamana, Lupsa, Romania

The valley was earmarked as a decantation basin where toxic waste from the copper mine, the biggest in Europe, could flow.

Geamana's inhabitants were promised big payouts from the government, but families are said to have only received a modest patch of land miles away from their hometown and very little cash to live on.

Geamana, Lupsa, Romania

Flooding almost all of the village, a horrifying toxic cocktail of heavy metal pollutants seeped into the valley from the late 1970s onwards, including vast quantities of pyrite, which generates highly corrosive sulphuric acid and dissolved iron when exposed to the air, poisoning soil and groundwater for miles around.

Geamana, Lupsa, Romania

Though the clean-up of the valley was one of the pre-conditions outlined in Romania's Accession Treaty to the European Union, the company that owns the Rosia Poieni mine has done little to detoxify the area and its surroundings.

To this day, the poisonous blood red, orange and turquoise lake makes for a shocking sight and is considered one of Europe's worst ecological disasters.

Love Canal, New York, USA

In 1894, William T. Love dreamed of creating a 'dream community' in a neighbourhood of Niagara Falls, New York – just 6 miles (10km) from the Canadian border. He began by digging a canal to link the Upper and Lower Niagara Rivers and produce energy to power the area. Unfortunately, the plan soon stalled.

Then, in the 1940s and 1950s, the partially built canal was used by the Hooker Chemicals and Plastics Corporation, who dumped huge amounts of chemical waste into it. In 1953, they covered it with earth and sold it to the city for one dollar. About 100 homes and a school were then built on the site – a decision which proved catastrophic.

Love Canal, New York, USA

As one agent from the US Environmental Protection Agency observed, corroding drums of waste could be seen protruding from the ground in backyards, trees began to turn black and puddles of chemicals pooled in basements, gardens and school grounds. Children received burns to their hands and faces after playing outside, and the community suffered an alarmingly high incidence of miscarriages and birth defects.

The waste contained 248 chemicals, including polychlorinated biphenyls, dioxin and pesticides. Of the 82 compounds discovered, 11 were suspected carcinogens. In 1978, 230 families living next to Love Canal – including this one – were evacuated to nearby motels.

Love Canal, New York, USA

This photo taken in 1981 shows a protest sign pleading for help outside a boarded-up Love Canal house.

Over the years, more than 800 families were eventually evacuated, although some were forced to return for up to six months when the New York State Department of Health stopped paying for people without medical certificates to stay in motels. Angry at the slow relocation, some residents held two US EPA representatives hostage for five hours before releasing them unharmed.

Love Canal, New York, USA

The canal site was fenced off and covered with a liner and a three-foot (0.9m) clay cap. In 1984, 1,336 former residents agreed to a payout of $20 million – that's about $60.7 million (£49m) today. In 1990, New York State finished cleaning up the site and declared parts of the neighbourhood safe to live in again. That year, a section just north of Love Canal was rebranded as Black Creek Village and was quickly resettled with new residents. However, some locals fear the area could still be harmful.

This 2014 image shows one of the Love Canal lots standing empty, its home razed long ago. It's an eerie reminder of the worst chemical waste disaster in America's history.

Sydney Tar Ponds, Nova Scotia, Canada

For a century, the steel industry dominated the town of Sydney, Nova Scotia. This 1916 photo shows the steel mill's ovens hard at work turning coal into the coke needed to make steel. However, this process also produces toxic wastes including benzene, kerosene and naphthalene – all of which were poured into a nearby brook for decades.

The pools that accumulated became known as the Sydney Tar Ponds – Canada's worst contaminated site.

Sydney Tar Ponds, Nova Scotia, Canada

Although the steel plant closed for good in 2000, this rather idyllic-looking pond remained, but it hid a dark truth: it was contaminated with toxic-laden soil. Even more shocking, it was located at the heart of a community of 30,000 people, some of whom had noticed worrying health issues.

The inhabitants of Frederick Street, a road which runs along one edge of the site, likened the tar ponds to Niagara's notorious Love Canal disaster. They have claimed for decades that their serious illnesses were caused by the toxic soup that seeped into their homes and gardens, although the government denies this.

Sydney Tar Ponds, Nova Scotia, Canada

Former Frederick Street resident Debbie McDonald told CTV News that she had found an oozing yellow liquid in her basement, which turned out to be arsenic. Nova Scotia’s Chief Medical Officer at the time suggested to her that "exposure to the chemicals would not harm health". However, the Health Canada review studied the period between 1951 and 1994 and concluded people in Sydney had a greater chance of dying from certain cancers than most Canadians.

The homes on Frederick Street were eventually demolished in 1999 and the residents relocated. This grassy track is all that remains.

Sydney Tar Ponds, Nova Scotia, Canada

While a class action lawsuit against the federal and Nova Scotia governments failed, individuals have succeeded in winning compensation against the former owners of the Sydney steel plant.

In a CAD$400 million (£225m/$278m) clean-up, the toxic sludge was mixed with cement, which they then covered in earth. Today, the tar ponds have been transformed into Open Hearth Park and while Sydney is still inhabited, it's unlikely Frederick Street ever will be again.

Cheshire, Ohio, USA

The General James M. Gavin Power Plant dominates the skyline of what was once the small town of Cheshire, Ohio. Built in the 1970s, the coal-fired power plant is one of the largest in the US and has been one of its biggest CO2 emitters. While it brought jobs to the area, it also brought thick blue plume clouds, which were caused by sulphur trioxide and sulphuric acid emissions.

Locals complained of blistered mouths, breathing difficulties and a burning feeling in their eyes and throats. The plant owners AEP were also sued for causing acid rain in other states and the EPA accused the plant of violating the Clean Air Act. In response, Gavin Power installed pollution control systems – and it made a very unusual deal with Cheshire residents...

Cheshire, Ohio, USA

In 2002, AEP bought the entire town for $20 million – about $35 million (£28.8m) today – after which no further legal action could be taken against the company. More than 200 residents moved away and their homes were bulldozed. However, a few older residents remained, like Jim Rife, pictured. Under the deal, retirees could receive the payout but stay in their homes until they died, at which time the property transferred to AEP, who then demolished it.

Although Cheshire had stood since the 1800s, it became a ghost town within a few short months.

Cheshire, Ohio, USA

"Cheshire was a place that the residents really loved," filmmaker Eve Morgenstern told the BBC in 2021. "It was a quaint village that hadn't been taken over by the strip malls and developers".

One local recalled that Cheshire was "very middle America" with "white picket fences" and "going to the high school football games on Friday nights".

Today, this abandoned stadium on a former high school campus is a haunting reminder of happier times.

Cheshire, Ohio, USA

After most of Cheshire was bulldozed, the town's boundaries were expanded to include homes from the neighbouring Cheshire Township, where these children, Mason and Bailey, were pictured playing in 2008.

The plant hit the headlines again in 2022 when the EPA ordered it to stop dumping coal ash into unlined storage ponds. The ash, which contains mercury, cadmium and arsenic as well as other heavy metals, allegedly contaminated groundwater and can poison wildlife and cause respiratory illness in people living nearby, AP reported. The plant is now slated to close by 2031.