Chemical pollution in the former USSR

A poisoned legacy



RUBEN MNATSAKANIAN

surveys the inheritance of chemical pollution
in Eastern Europe and the former USSR

Prof. Ruben Mnatsakanian is Professor of Environmental Sciences and
Policy at the Central European University, Budapest.





Industrial development at any cost was the dominant dogma during the
communist decades. Civil society did not exist as we know it today and
industry belonged to the state. So major industrial lobbies within the
state bureaucracy made decisions with little attention to the
consequences for public health and the environment. The economy was
highly militarized, and the enterprises of the military-industrial
complex - very often extremely dangerous environmentally - operated
without any control from the nature protection authorities.

The performance of every enterprise was mainly assessed by the quantity
of goods it produced. Clean air, water, and a pristine environment were
considered free goods, without value. So polluting them was acceptable.


Secrecy in practically all aspects of life was another characteristic
feature of communism. Information on environmental pollution was
classified, and could not be discussed openly - which explains why it
was so bad for decades without major public concern. Only when it
exceeded all tolerable limits, in the 1980s, did the first independent
green movements start in Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and
the former Soviet Union.

Nevertheless, monitoring the environment was organized reasonably well
- for example through the State Committee on Hydrometeorology and
Control of the Environment in the former USSR. All major cities and
water bodies were under permanent observation, as were major sources of
pollution (excluding military installations), and findings were
published in a series of annual classified reports, with only limited
circulation (100 to 200 copies).

Diluting pollutants was often regarded as the major environmental
management mechanism. So-called 'maximum permissible concentrations'
(MPCs) were established for a very long list of pollutants, hundreds of
them for water quality alone. Very often they were stricter than in the
Western countries. But in reality only a few dozen compounds were
regularly monitored. Technology did not permit wide-scale monitoring of
many environmentally dangerous chemicals, especially VOCs, PAHs,
dioxins and other compounds which have significant effects even at very
low concentrations. There was some tracking of some of their emissions,
calculated through knowledge of the production processes, but not of
their concentrations in the environment.

Needless to say, concentrations of pollutants could very rarely be kept
at 'maximum permissible' levels, especially as there was very little
enforcement of regulations. It was easier (and cheaper) for enterprises
to dilute them by building higher chimneys or dumping wastes in large
rivers, lakes and seas, than to construct and operate expensive
purification equipment. Industrial wastes, including toxic and even
radioactive ones, very often accumulated (sometimes for decades) in
primitive dumping sites near the factories themselves.








Air pollution

Pollution above 'permissible' levels is quite common in most cities of
the former USSR. By one authoritative estimate, between 1988 and 1992
more than 66 million people in Russia alone lived in cities where MPCs
were violated. Pollution with PAH, originating from improper fuel
combustion, is particularly serious: only benzo(a)pyrene is monitored
on a regular basis.

Industrial decline has caused a substantial reduction in emissions of
chemicals in many countries of Eastern Europe. But air quality has not
improved that much in most cities. The main reasons are the very sharp
growth of private cars (in Moscow, for example, the number has doubled
in the last few years), and the poor quality of the domestically
produced petrol they use. Enterprises also pay practically no attention
to environmental protection measures in the current economic hardships.
Their purification equipment is often obsolete and they often cannot
afford to replace it.

The situation is gradually improving in would-be members of the
European Union, such as Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovenia.
Foreign firms buying industries in these countries are obliged to
follow environmental standards, and the quality of car fuels is
adequate.





Pesticides

The production and use of pesticides in Eastern European countries
increased from the 1960s and their use peaked in the second half of the
1980s. They became too expensive in practically all countries of the
region with the onset of economic reforms and so, fortunately, their
use is now gradually decreasing.

Nevertheless, pesticide concentrations in soils remain high in many
places. A selective review of soils in the spring of 1994 by Russia's
State Committee on Land Resources showed that about 9.4 per cent of
samples were polluted with pesticides above safety levels. The
situation in the Aral Sea basin is very serious: the Uzbek Ministry of
Nature Protection reports that concentrations of pesticides in the
area's surface fresh waters on average exceed safety norms more than
five times over.

Socialist, collective agriculture required large, homogeneous fields
which could be cultivated by large machines. Pesticides were mainly
applied from the air, which often meant they were widely spread. Soil
in the fields of Uzbekistan, for example, were quite commonly
contaminated by DDT and other chlorine-containing pesticides at levels
100 to 300 times the MPC; the maximum, in the Termez region, was 4,800
times the MPC. Concentrations in soil at airfields used for
agricultural planes exceeded the MPC level by 25,000 to 30,000 times.
Recently these concentrations have been gradually decreasing.

Specialized places for storing and processing pesticides on collective
farms were very rare: often they did not even have a primitive roof. In
many countries old pesticides present a very serious problem. The
Ukraine Ministry of Environmental Protection says there are about
10,700 tonnes of them on farms, while Russia has about 40,000 tonnes
spread throughout the country - an amount roughly equal to the chemical
weapons stored there. The Albanian State Committee on Environmental
Protection reports about 2,000 tonnes in its country and there are
thousands of tonnes in Azerbaidjan, the Central Asian Republics,
Moldova and elsewhere. They are usually stored in very poor conditions:
there are simply no facilities to transport or use them safely: and
they often penetrate to groundwater, causing serious contamination.





Wastes

The mountains of solid wastes, and lakes of liquid ones, near most
heavy industry in Poland, the Czech Republic, the former German
Democratic Republic, Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, Estonia and other
countries are probably the most visible environmental legacy of the
former system. Storing wastes in open ponds, or on the ground (with
practically no protection against percolation), was common.

Ukraine's extremely difficult problems exemplify the situation for all
the former Soviet Union. Its Ministry of Environmental Protection
reports that about 4 billion tonnes of toxic wastes - containing high
concentrations of mercury, cadmium, lead, copper, nickel, vanadium and
other heavy metals - have already built up there, and they are often
stored in absolutely inadequate conditions. In many places, especially
in the east of the country, aquifers are already contaminated and
inadequate for water supply.

The country produces about 100 million tonnes of toxic waste a year.
Although the output of metallurgical and chemical industries was cut by
about half between 1992 and 1994, their generation of toxic waste fell
by only 25 to 30 per cent. As industry declined, the recycling of toxic
wastes also fell: in 1994 it was only 41.3 per cent of its 1990 level.

The Azerbaidjan Government reports that 97 per cent of waste goes to
dumping sites with practically no groundwater protection. Often toxic
wastes are dumped at sites designed for domestic rubbish: there is
practically no control. Meanwhile in Uzbekistan, its Government adds,
more than 2 billion tonnes of wastes have accumulated at dumping sites
(1.3 billion tonnes from the mining industry). These wastes often
contain high concentrations of heavy metals, such as lead, mercury,
cadmium, arsenic, nickel, zinc and copper amongst many others.
Practically none of these sites are ecologically safe: leakages and the
percolation of pollutants are observed everywhere.

The list could be endless, including all countries of the region. There
is a very serious situation in many parts of Russia (Urals, the Moscow
region, the Kola peninsula, Kuzbass, to name just a few), Kazakhstan
and practically everywhere throughout Eastern Europe.





Oil

Pollution by oil and its products by the Soviet/Russian oil industry is
a permanent disaster. The majority of pipelines were built in the 1970s
and 1980s, in a great rush, in permafrost or acid peat soils in east
Siberia, and they very frequently corrode and discharge oil. Only major
incidents (like last year's disaster in the Komi Republic) attract
international attention, but smaller leakages are very common. There
are about 60,000 minor leaks from Russian pipelines every year, and the
annual loss of oil and its products is estimated to be at least 3.5 per
cent of total extraction. In east Siberia alone, the Security Council
of the Russian Federation estimates, 3 to 10 million tonnes of crude
oil leak each year. Arctic ecosystems have very little ability to
purify themselves; so oil, heavy metals, radionuclides and other
pollutants remain for decades if not centuries.

Oil pollution of the seas, especially in the Arctic, presents another
extremely difficult situation. The Barents and Kara seas are very
heavily polluted as a result of many violations of technical rules
during extraction and transport. To take one example, 10 per cent of
the bottom sediments of the Ob estuary, where sturgeons used to winter,
are now made up of heavy fractions of oil. The situation is not much
better in Azerbaidjan: bottom sediments in Baku Bay, its Government
reports, are extremely polluted.





Chemical weapons

Appalling facts on the production and storage of chemical weapons in
Russia (kept absolutely secret during Soviet times) have recently
become known. Seven factories produced chemical weapons in five cities
- Berezniki, Chapaevsk, Dzherzhinsk, Volgograd and Novocheboksarsk. The
last four are on the banks of the Volga - Europe's largest river and
the source of drinking water for millions of people. Production,
testing and storage of chemical weapons were accompanied by numerous
violations of safety rules. In 1990-1992 - before it signed the
International Convention on Chemical Weapons - Russia announced that it
had 40,000 tonnes of poisonous substances, including 32,000 tonnes of
phosphorous-organic compounds.

The problem of how to destroy the weapons is still unresolved because
public protests have blocked the use of a specially designed factory at
Shikhany, near Saratov, also on the banks of the Volga. In the past,
vast quantities were commonly dumped in the sea. Data collected by L.
A. Fedorov, in his 1995 book Undeclared Chemical War in Russia:
Politics against Ecology, shows that the dumping took place at hundreds
of locations in the Baltic Sea, Black Sea, Barents Sea, Kara Sea, White
Sea, Sea of Japan, Sea of Okhotsk, and probably others too. He also
produced some evidence that chemical weapons were buried in rivers and
peat bogs throughout Russia.





Rocket fuel

The Soviet and Russian industries produce an extremely toxic substance
- non-symmetric methylhydrazine - as a liquid rocket fuel. Like
chemical weapons, this substance belongs to the first class of
toxicity. During the course of a launch, unspent fuel enters the
atmosphere with discarded sections of rocket. Given that there were
thousands of launches in the former USSR and Russia, pollution of waste
territories in the Archangelsk region, Gorny Altai and Yakutia is now a
serious problem, according to Prof. Alexei Yablokov, head of the
Interagency Committee on Ecological Security of Russia.

At present there are about 200,000 tonnes of rocket fuel in store at
different facilities in Russia - five times the amount of chemical
weapons. Production, storage, transportation and utilization of fuel
may have serious ecological effects, as yet barely known to the public.
For example, according to an unofficial source, the mysterious death of
more than 2 million starfish and thousands of other species in the
White Sea in 1990 is linked with an unsuccessful rocket launch from a
submarine. The rocket was destroyed and fuel entered the sea with
devastating ecological consequences. The official commission that
investigated the case immediately after the incident said that the
causes of the deaths were 'not known'.

.

Relevant Pages