"Valley of Death"

In the 1980s, Cubatão in São Paulo, Brazil gained the moniker 'Valley of Death,' as one of the most polluted cities in the world. As the New York Times reported in 1985, "The factories on this swampland have turned the nearby town into a place of superlatives: in Cubatao, pollutants in the rain have reached some of the highest levels known in the world; the air is considered unfit for humans on a record number of days, and more cases of cancer, stillbirths and deformed babies are reportedly recorded here than anywhere else in Brazil...Around Cubatao, pollution has choked off life in rivers and fields and is killing trees behind the town on the mountain range that traps emissions. Without vegetation to hold the soil, landslides have followed and large strips of green have vanished from the 2,000-foot-high slopes as though scraped off by giant claws." In 1984, an oil spill set one of Cubatao's shantytowns on fire, killing almost 100 people.