Brazil comes top of world's worst polluters

The South American nation of Brazil, home to large parts of the endangered Amazon rainforest, has topped a list of the most polluting nations on the planet.

According to research carried out by the University of Adelaide's Environment Institute, published in the science journal PLoS ONE, Brazil is the country which has the worst impact on the planet.

Brazil is followed by the US, China, Indonesia, Japan and Mexico. India, Russia, Australia and Peru make up the rest of the polluting top ten.

The study solely looked at the environmental impact and it was found that on average, the wealthier a nation, the bigger impact it had on the planet's environment.

"We correlated rankings against three socio-economic variables (human population size, gross national income and governance quality) and found that total wealth was the most important explanatory variable," said professor Corey Bradshaw, the environment institute's director of ecological modelling.

Much of Brazil's pollution is caused by rainforest clearing, as the cutting down of trees often leads to large levels of CO2 being released into the atmosphere.

Written by Sandra Mann.

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