10 Places Humans Shouldn’t Be Able To Live (But Do)

Most people wouldn't even give a moment's thought to the materials that make up their smartphone, but there is a place on Earth where there's just no getting away from it.

Baotou, in inner Mongolia, is home to a vast artificial lake filled with black, toxic sludge due to the region's status as one of the world's biggest suppliers of "rare earth minerals". These minerals are used in pretty much all of our modern technologies, but can only be found in high enough densities in certain parts of the planet.

Baotou is like a frontier town in the demand for these materials, and the environment certainly pays the price. Huge outflow pipes spew sulphurous sludge into the coal-blackened wasteland and a city-sized factory hulks down on the horizon. When it rains in the Baotou region (which it does, frequently) the groundwater runs black with coal dust.

People live here too, mostly factory workers and their families, all crammed together in hastily built tower blocks that linger on the edges of the putrid land. This kind of industrial landscape gives us an idea of what much of England and Western Europe would have looked like during the industrial revolution

But this industrial gold rush is an entirely modern phenomenon and shows the true price of our all-consuming need for the latest iPhone.