[paganel]

> It was the same in the heavily industrialized parts of Germany till the 80s or so

Like you very well pointed out, most of that industry and the associated pollution has moved further East. As a citizen of such an Eastern European country I was unpleasantly surprised to feel the air suddenly tasting "chemical" as I was driving on a highway in Transylvania, near a town called Sebes.

Sure enough, I then soon found an article of the local residents complaining about a chemical company polluting the air they breath (in here [1], article in Romanian, unfortunately). The culprit is an Austrian (not German, but closed enough) company called Kronospan, and on its wiki page [2] one can see that its latest investment was made in Belarus, presumably only a dictatorship still allows this sort of thing to go unchecked. The same wiki page also details some pollution-related incidents for which the company was responsible in Wales in the early 2000s, that is in another relatively poor area like the Southern US states mentioned in the article.

[1] https://casajurnalistului.ro/kronospanik/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kronospan

[mauvehaus]

Industries moving as local populations wise up to the health problems they cause has been going on for a long time. The book Toms River[0] briefly covers the history of the synthetic dye industry from its inception in Germany, moving to Cincinnati, OH, and subsequently to Toms River, NJ (then a sleepy backwater location).

The book is highly worth a read, and I was thinking about some of the outcomes in the book when I read the article and comments on Scientists Rise Up Against Statistical Significance[1] here.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toms_River_(book) [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19445827

[hef19898]

And these companies usually refuse any responsibility for the aftermath. Kind of worked back when they still produced basically at home, but even the they knew the risks. But after they moved because of all the dirty shit that's just cynicism. They literally look for poor regions and people to pollute. Which sucks...