Toxic towns you still can't live in
These abandoned communities are seriously hazardous

Gilman, Colorado, USA

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.
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Gilman, Colorado, USA

Gilman, Colorado, USA

Pripyat, Kiev Oblast, Ukraine

Pripyat, Kiev Oblast, Ukraine

Pripyat, Kiev Oblast, Ukraine

Pripyat, Kiev Oblast, Ukraine

Centralia, Pennsylvania, USA

Centralia, Pennsylvania, USA

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. In 2006, only a few homes remained, including this unstable row house.
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Centralia, Pennsylvania, USA

Wittenoom, Pilbara, Australia

Wittenoom, Pilbara, Australia

Wittenoom, Pilbara, Australia

Wittenoom, Pilbara, Australia

Picher, Oklahoma, USA

Picher, Oklahoma, USA

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.
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Picher, Oklahoma, USA

Namie, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan

Namie, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan

Namie, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan

Namie, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan

New Idria, California, USA

New Idria, California, USA

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.
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New Idria, California, USA

Kantubek, Vozrozhdeniya Island, Uzbekistan

Kantubek, Vozrozhdeniya Island, Uzbekistan

Kantubek, Vozrozhdeniya Island, Uzbekistan

Kantubek, Vozrozhdeniya Island, Uzbekistan

Tyneham, Dorset, UK

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.
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Tyneham, Dorset, UK

Tyneham, Dorset, UK

Geamana, Lupsa, Romania

Geamana, Lupsa, Romania

Geamana, Lupsa, Romania

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, and 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.
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