Umweltbelastungen in europäischen Städten und Regionen der Russischen Föderation

Abstract

The environmental pollution in Russia currently has global character. The estimates of the water, air and soil pollution in the large and in some medium-sized cities are currently very high. The cities with the greatest atmospheric emissions (dust, sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, organic compounds) include in the European part of Russia Lipetsk, Cherepovets, Magnitogorsk, Novocherkassk, Nizhniy Tagil and Moscow. The emissions principally originate from the metallurgic industry, but also from thermal power plants and from the chemical industry. In 1995, only 5% of the waste water discharged into the surface waters of Russia had been properly treated. The largest quantities of contaminated waste water per inhabitant were to be found in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Nizhniy Novgorod and Samara. The municipal industry, but also general industry (chemicals, paper) were the main causes. The reduction in waste water discharge was principally a result of the drop in production in most cities up until the middle of the nineties. The disposal of settlement and industrial waste remains extremely inefficient in Russia. In the cities of the European part of Russia, only 5% of the settlement waste is currently incinerated in waste processing plants. Landfills were and remain the basic form of waste disposal. Until 1994, there was not one single company in the Russian Federation for the disposal and storage of toxic industrial waste. As a result of the environmental pollution, the mean increase inmorbidity in the population of the Russian cities was 20%. For example, in 1994, only 15% of the urban population lived in regions with a tolerable air pollution, in one third of the municipal water networks, the quality of the drinking water was insufficient. The severe economic crisis in Russia has resulted in the investments in environmental protection sinking rapidly, in 1994 it was only 9% of what it had been in 1991. Under these circumstances, many planned rescue measures may not be able to be implemented, as ecological prognoses for the future do not make any positive development appear likely.