Linfen in China is located right in the center of the country’s massive coal industry. The place has the dubious honor of being the most polluted city in the world. It also has not had a mayor for half a year now because the previous local executives were dismissed from service for poor management.

The local power now lies with the Deputy Mayor Luo Qingyuan. The repeated rejection of many candidates to succeed the city’s top leadership began to cause concern. In the past three years, the place has had four mayors.

The job is not appealing, to say the least. In September last year, the last mayor, Liu Zhijia, was dismissed for mismanagement of a mining accident that caused 270 deaths, making it one of the most severe cases in recent decades in China. Approximately 3,000 miners die each year from industrial accidents especially in the coal basin of northern China.

Linfen ranked first in the list of 10 most polluted places in the world as issued by the Blacksmith Institute in the USA. Other most polluted places include Tianying which is also in China, others from Russia, Azerbaijan, India, Ukraine, Zambia, and Peru. Many of these places are mining areas.

Linfen has a high incidence of skin diseases and lung cancer among its three million inhabitants. With high levels of sulfur dioxide in the air, the city pays the price of China’s high dependence on coal. China sources 70 percent of its energy requirements from coal.

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Via Yahoo! News

If you work in an industrial setting or in a factory there is a saw involved, chances are you may lose a finger or two. In order to address this issue, SawStop has been created in order to save people from losing their fingers.

The machine comes with a unique and advanced saw stop mechanism, which detects your finger when it comes too close to the saw and the saw stops within a fraction of a second. When your finger comes into contact with the saw, it stops because your finger is a conductive material. Thus, you are saved of your precious fingers.

You may end up with a few scratches but that is still ok as I would say, scratches are much better than losing fingers altogether. There is no information about the price and availability and hence you might want to contact the company themselves and ask for it. If you are a factory owner, I suggest you get this as an Easter Gift for your employees.

Via: GadgetGrid