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- <text id=90TT0666>
- <title>
- Mar. 19, 1990: Romania:The Blackest Town In The World
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1990
- Mar. 19, 1990 The Right To Die
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- WORLD, Page 34
- ROMANIA
- The Blackest Town In the World
- </hdr>
- <body>
- <p>For miles and miles, every thing and creature in his once green
- valley is veiled in soot
- </p>
- <p> "It took several hours for me to realize that I was still
- standing on the planet earth," says photographer Anthony Suau,
- recalling his trip last month to Copsa Mica. "It was as if a
- gigantic bottle of ink had spilled on the town." Copsa Mica's
- chief industry is tire production, and 24 hours a day its
- smokestacks heave out noxious, coal-based clouds that cake
- faces and fingers, cars and houses, grass and trees with
- endless soot.
- </p>
- <p> Babies are born with malformed hearts, children suffer from
- bronchial asthma, and adults struggle with lead poisoning.
- Suau's stark photographs are but one glimpse of the anguished
- land left behind by Nicolae Ceausescu, who put Copsa Mica (pop.
- 6,000) into industrial overdrive. Situated 150 miles northwest
- of Bucharest, the town is in the county of Sibiu, which was
- once governed by the late dictator's son Nicu. Likely to go on
- trial within the next few months, Nicu could receive life
- imprisonment if convicted. A more appropriate punishment might
- be to sentence him to spend the rest of his days in Copsa
- Mica.
- </p>
-
- </body>
- </article>
- </text>
-
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