Paul Goble
Staunton, Oct. 28 – Eight years ago, Russian environmental activists report, air pollution was the chief environmental threat to the health and lives of Russians but last year, they say, water pollution exceeded air pollution as the most senior environmental threat, leading to more than 11,000 deaths and 1.54 million illnesses.
What is especially worrisome, the experts say, is that the number of reservoirs and pipeline systems which are contaminated has more than doubled over that period; and as a result, the full impact of rising water pollution on Russian demography lies ahead (newizv.ru/article/general/28-10-2022/ostorozhno-voda-nazvana-glavnaya-prichina-smertnosti-svyazannaya-s-ekologiey and tochno.st/materials/vozdukh-voda-pochvy-i-musor-glavnye-ekologicheskie-problemy-kotorye-vliyayut-na-zhizn-i-zdorove-rossiyan-issledovanie-esli-byt-tochnym).
Other kinds of enrionmental pollution remains threats as well. More than half of Russia’s cities are now rated as having substandard air quality, with a growing share of these having significant contamination; and the country is running out of space at its trash dumps, leading many localities to allow unofficial dumps to open.
Because these are not supervised and controlled – although the authorities keep closing them down – such unofficial dumps regularly bleed chemicals into the water, ground and air around them and pose threats to the well being of Russians in neighboring areas. Efforts to open dumps further away have been blocked, as at Shiyes, by massive protests.
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