The ailing mother Russia.

Editor's Note: Although environmental health problems exist throughout the former Soviet Union, the focus of this article is on the problems in Russia and the programs addressing them. It is estimated at least one in five Russian babies born today is in poor health. In Moscow, three out of four expectant mothers have some pathology in their pregnancy. Males in one Arctic village are not expected to live beyond their early 40s; women in this village usually do not live beyond their late 40s. Children and adults throughout Russia suffer from respiratory and intestinal disorders at a rate many times higher than elsewhere in the world. Although such grim statistics are in part a result of poor nutrition, inadequate medical care, cigarette smoking, and alcoholism, extensive environmental degradation remains a primary culprit. As the largest of the former Soviet Union's 15 republics, Russia helped direct a massive military-industrial machine that stretched from the Baltics to Central Asia, the Arctic, Siberia, and Eastern Europe. That Soviet legacy continues to threaten the environment and health of hundreds of millions of people as well as future generations. The sources of pollution are many and varied: thousands of factories built in tight concentrations expelling waste into vital waterways; mines working at full tilt to extract raw materials; farms dumping massive amounts of chemicals on crops; nuclear testing sites and power plants that have leaked, exploded, or recklessly disposed of their wastes; and a military that still discards its toxic and nuclear wastes into the seas. Because production was emphasized over efficiency, local environments became over-taxed by the all-powerful monopolies. Science, to help meet the state's goals, was made subservient to its demands. The central government determined the direction of scientific research, kept its nature hidden, and sifted through the results to find those that fit its purposes. Until the late 1 980s, the Ministry of Public Health would not contradict the USSR's industrial practices by revealing that they might be damaging the nation's environment and health. In 1986, immediately after the nuclear reactor explosion at Chernobyl, employees of the public health ministry were forbidden to provide any information about the accident. In addition, it was not until 1988 that the Soviet Union established its first environmental protection agency; the State Committee on Environmental Protection was then promoted to the level of ministry in 1991. Today, Russians must cope not only with a rapid transition …

It is estimated at least one in five Russian babies born today is in poor health. In Moscow, three out of four expectant mothers have some pathology in their pregnancy. Males in one Arctic village are not expected to live beyond their early 40s; women in this village usually do not live beyond their late 40s. Children and adults throughout Russia suffer from respiratory and intestinal disorders at a rate many times higher than elsewhere in the world.
Although such grim statistics are in part a result of poor nutrition, inadequate medical care, cigarette smoking, and alcoholism, extensive environmental degradation remains a primary culprit. As the largest of the former Soviet Union's 15 republics, Russia helped direct a massive militaryindustrial machine that stretched from the Baltics to Central Asia, the Arctic, Siberia, and Eastern Europe. That Soviet legacy continues to threaten the environment and health of hundreds of millions of people as well as future generations.
The sources of pollution are many and varied: thousands of factories built in tight concentrations expelling waste into vital waterways; mines working at full tilt to extract raw materials; farms dumping massive amounts of chemicals on crops; nuclear testing sites and power plants that have leaked, exploded, or recklessly disposed of their wastes; and a military that still discards its toxic and nuclear wastes into the seas. Because production was emphasized over efficiency, local environments became overtaxed by the all-powerful monopolies.
Science, to help meet the state's goals, was made subservient to its demands. The central government determined the direction of scientific research, kept its nature hidden, and sifted through the results to find those that fit its purposes. Until the late 1 980s, the Ministry of Public Health would not contradict the USSR's industrial practices by revealing that they might be damaging the nation's environment and health. In 1986, immediately after the nuclear reactor explosion at Chernobyl, employees of the public health ministry were forbidden to provide any information about the accident. In addition, it was not until 1988 that the Soviet Union established its first environmental protection agency; the State Committee on Environmental Protection was then promoted to the level of ministry in 1991.
Today, Russians must cope not only with a rapid transition from a command to a market economy, but with a greatly damaged environment as well. A number of organizations in Western countries are attempting to provide funds, expertise, and technology, but efforts sometimes meet a complex set of roadblocks, including a sense of national pride that can cause some Russians to feel "humiliated by large foreign groups arriving and trying to teach them," according to Marina Savelyeva, Russian program coordinator for the International Center for Better Health/AESOP. "Outside help should be given carefully and with respect to our culture," she wrote in the fall 1992 issue of Surviving Together, a quarterly journal published by ISAR (formerly the Institute for Soviet-American Relations) in Washington.
"The desire to improve is there," says Murray Feshbach, professor of demography at Georgetown University and co-author with Alfred Friendly, Jr. of Ecocide in the USSR: Health and Nature Under Siege, "but there's the lack of funding for environmental work, and now there's this drive for economic development. It's true there are a lot of small grants, but there are also a lot of people who want them. There has to be much more from the West; yet, at the same time the Russians want to help themselves." Unchecked emissions. Factories throughout Russia, like this metal ore smelting complex near Monchegorsk, continue to pollute the air and water.

Extent of Pollution
Although Russia's old polluting practices are now known to be dangerous, little has been done to stop them. To close down offending factories would mean dismissing workers and adding to an unemployment burden that Federal Employment Service head Fedor Prokopov says could reach 10-12 million this year. In addition, a single plant is often the only producer of a vital component; to shut it down could start a chain reaction that would jeopardize other related factories. A successful push to close a polluting aspirin factory in 1990, for example, left the entire country without aspirin until it was reopened. Even some regional environmental groups stop short of calling for plant shut-downs; their own livelihood would be wiped out.
"Instead of closing down factories, the government wanted us [scientists] to find medical solutions to the illnesses," says Ilya Tsyrlov, formerly with the Soviet National Academy of Sciences and now senior research scientist at the U.S. National Cancer Institute. "Or they wanted us to develop a migration approach; for example, people would work at an aluminum factory for one year and then be moved to a different industry. In my opinion, this was totally inhumane." In 1992, 6000 businesses were brought to trial for allegedly polluting the environment, according to an August 1993 article in the liberal Russian newspaper, Nezavisimaya Gazeta. Eighty-four percent of the defendants were found guilty, but because of severe financial conditions throughout the country, few could pay. As a compromise, the courts allowed the companies to use a portion of the fines to implement environmental protection measures. Russian experts estimate that if existing environmental fines were levied on all of the country's industrial businesses, 60% of them would go bankrupt.
In the meantime, Russians and their children continue to get sicker and die younger than their counterparts in other industrialized nations. In 1988, more than 1 out of 2 schoolchildren were believed to be in poor health; 18% suffered from intestinal disorders, 30% from chronic respiratory problems. In the southern Russian city of Magnitogorsk, iron-ore mines and the nearby steel factories surround a community in which 9 out of 10 children suffer from pollution-related illnesses such as bronchitis, asthma, allergies, and even cancers. Nationwide, worker absenteeism due to illness had reached an average of 4 million per day in 1989.
According to Nezavisimaya Gaz~eta, only 28% of infants born in 1992 were healthy, and only 27% had healthy mothers. It is also estimated that 30% of the children's Environmental Health Perspectives diseases in Magnitogorsk are the result of ecological factors. For example, much of Moscow's uninhabited land has been turned into vast, unsanctioned dumps, and 17.5 tons of heavy metals from city factories are discharged daily into the sewage system. Concentrations of zinc, copper, cadmium, and petroleum have been found in melted snow at 100-1000 times the maximum permissible levels. Children playing in sandboxes, authorities have warned, "risk grave illnesses." In the heavily industrialized city of Volgograd, in southwest Russia, doctors have reported significantly high numbers of infants and children with "severe developmental defects . . . pneumonia and bronchial asthma . .. and lots of skin allergies" over the last 10 years. These same doctors, however, do not have the expertise and tools to determine whether the children's health problems are directly due to the heavily polluted air, water, and soil that surround them; instead, they must often rely on anecdotal and circumstantial evidence. The study of adults is further complicated by widespread cigarette smoking and alcoholism. In addition, doctors continue to be hindered by inadequate training, obsolete technology, and a widespread shortage of medications.
Many of Volgograd's 1 million residents are employed by the 50 large industrial enterprises clustered in the region along the west bank of the Volga River, including carbon-black manufacturers, foundries, furniture makers, and aluminum reduction plants. In 1992, the U.S. EPA began a joint project with the United States Agency for International Development to assist Russian leaders, especially those in Volgograd, in "rethinking their whole approach to air pollution control," according to Tom Pace, program manager for EPA's Russia Air Management Program. "Fortunately," Pace continued, "Volgograd has a progressive government that's anxious to make improvements in local environmental conditions." The wanton dumping of chemical fertilizers and industrial wastes on the nation's farmlands has also led to high levels of nitrates and heavy metals, including cadmium, in Russian produce. In addition, although DDT was formally banned in the USSR in 1970, it was still used "by special permission" into the late 1980s. Although the new Russian government has abandoned r As r some ot the tarming prac-Murray Feshh tices of the former commu-want to help the nist leadership that led to a dependence on mechaniza-ac ms( tion and chemical applica-, tions, not everything has changed in Moscow, according to economist Sergei Bobylev. "Most agricultural plans being proposed by legislative and executive bodies, and by Russian and foreign specialists, still reflect the same technogenic approach to the problem," Bobylev wrote in Surviving Together.
Perhaps one of Russia's most intractable environ-Ilya Tsyrlovmental problems is the cleanup by priva widespread radioactive con-"bureaufantasy.
tamination from antiquated nuclear reactors, with a recently revealed history of explosions, as well as bomb-testing sites and military bases. Although the 1986 Chernobyl reactor accident occurred in Ukraine, its fallout traveled deep into western Russia, poisoning soil and water as far north as St. Petersburg. High radioactivity levels have also been found near many Russian cities, including Kapustin Yar, Balakov, Kostroma, and Tver, where nuclear bombs and missiles have been manufactured and tested for decades. With the collapse of communism have come increasing revelations about the extent of radioactive contamination throughout the former Soviet Union, including secret nuclear dumping in the Russian Arctic, which had been banned for decades by international agreement. Radioactive cesium has been found in tundra mosses, for example, and underground atomic explosions and once-secret plutonium plants have fouled many Russian rivers, including one of its largest, the Ob. In addition, many cities near military bases, including Murmansk, Chelyabinsk, and Severodvinsk, have reported a high incidence of radioactive pollution and suspicious cancers.
In the early 1990s, following national and international pressures, co the Soviet Union announced would suspend construc-_ tion on new nuclear power plants. At the same time, the production and output of coal, oil, and gas was steadily declining. With the fall of the Soviet Union, however, and the rise of a free-market economy, Russia will need more energy sources than ever, and the government has begun to reconsider the use h-Russians and construction of nuclear elves, power stations, despite some ongoing public outcry.
-Environmental ite industries is One Russian City Most former Soviet statistics are unreliable because "the local governments and party leaders hid the exact numbers from the people, giving them distorted information," says Valerie Kagan, associate professor in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health at the University of Pittsburgh. Doctors were prevented from publishing any findings that contradicted official reports. As a recent Russian emigre, Kagan is part of a trend that could hinder Russia's ability to restore the health of its environment and citizenry. Top Russian researchers and scientists have been leaving the country in droves, lured to Western nations by better materials, equipment, salaries, and opportunities for "real research." Those who stay in Russia are also leaving basic fields of study such as biology and zoology to enter more lucrative fields such as biotechnology or biochemistry, thereby affecting the quantity and quality of basic biological research now being conducted in Russia.
Since his arrival in the United States in 1989, Kagan has received "tons of calls and requests for reference letters to help scientists still in Russia get positions here." Though now a U.S. citizen, Kagan's research remains in great part devoted to improving the life of his former countrymen. Kagan's university department is planning to set up a collaborative research team to study pollution-related health problems in Novokuznets, the second largest city in Siberia and a major metallurgical center in the Ural Mountains. In 1987, Novokuznets had the fifth highest level of air pollution in the Soviet Union; the children of Novokuznets have had pneumonia rates more than four times that of even the heavily polluted northern port city of Archangelsk.
"Novokuznets is what Pittsburgh was like 40-50 years ago," says Kagan. "Today, in the United States, we would never have the opportunity to get the kinds of measurements in human groups as we can in Novokuznets. It's one of the nastiest examples of air pollution in the world." NCI's Tsyrlov is also looking at environmental contaminants in the Novokuznets region. Because of the number of aluminum factories, he says, benzopyrene levels are "thousands of times higher than normal." The concentrations are so high that "even less sensitive technology" can read them, ironically making it easier for Russian scientists to conduct studies without expensive foreign equipment.

9-1 I 1o9i
Taking Action When Russians ask each other "how are you," the almost universal response is "normalne." Such an answer is intended to mean that life cannot possibly be any better or any worse, a revealing example of the sense of fatalism that has dominated Russian society for decades, if not centuries. Revealing a Russian penchant for dark humor, a former health minister, A. I. Potopov, reportedly said in 1989 that "To live longer, you must breathe less." However, with glasnost and perestroika in the mid-1980s and subsequent revelations of environmental and health damage, many Russian citizens, unaccustomed to taking action on their own behalf, began to organize and protest, especially in Moscow and along the heavily polluted Volga River. Today, there are more than 500 public, private, academic, and grassroots organizations working Rosemarie Rus to improve the environment new spirit of o and environmental health Russian scientist throughout Russia, according to a directory published by the Washington-based Kompass Resources International. Kompass is a nonprofit organization that facilitates international exchange projects on educational, environmental, and health issues not only in Russia -but also in the Newly Independent States, Baltics, and Central and Eastern European Republics.
One of the early Moscow-based environmental groups is the Socio-Ecological Union (SEU), founded in 1988 by Maria Cherkasova, Mikhail Lemeshev, and Aleksei Yablokov. Yablokov is now presidential advisor on the environment and health to President Boris Yeltsin as well as head of the environmental security subcommittee on the Security Council. During his presidential campaign in 1991, Yeltsin often blamed the Soviet government's secrecy for the republic's environmental problems, leading to speculation that he would favor industrial reforms. But because Russia's political and economic problems are still so severe, says Tsyrlov, "such health problems are not a priority, not even in second or third place. Russia's only hope is in its people movements.
Feshbach adds that the percentage of Russia's federal budget allotted for environmental and health concerns is currently about 4%, down from 6.65% in 1965. And while pollution from industry has decreased by 11% in the last two years, production has also fallen by 18%, he says, signaling a correlation between levels of production ISSO lptin ists. and pollution, rather than significant success in controlling emissions and wastes.
Today, the SEU is an umbrella organization that joins 150 groups from 13 of the former Soviet republics. The SEU works closely with the Washington-based nonprofit organization ISAR. Their first joint project involved the establishment of an Email network that allows environmental groups throughout the former Soviet Union to quickly and easily share information with each other and related groups around the world. Through the net-U work, more than 200 nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are now linked throughout the former Soviet Union. "One thing they discovered is that information is power," says Kate Watters, ISAR's head of environmental programs. "The E-mail network cuts down on the isolation that many people can feel there. What we're -There's a doing is just connecting mism among groups with each other, so they don't work at cross-purposes with each other." In 1993, ISAR received two grants from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to be administered to "green" groups working in the former Soviet Union. The grants support cooperative and individual projects developed by environmental NGOs in the United States and Russia.
Environmental collaborations with the United States go back to the mid-1970s, when the governments of the United States and USSR signed the first EPA Bilateral Agreement in 1975. Continually updated, the agreement now calls for separate cooperative arrangements between EPA and each newly independent state. In the Russian Federation, EPA representatives work with their counterparts from the Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources. Among many joint research projects, the groups are currently studying the sources, effects, and potential solutions to air, water, and soil pollution.
In the late 1970s, when Rosemarie Russo, now head of the EPA's Environmental Research Laboratory in Athens, Georgia, first visited the Soviet Union, communication between American and Russian scientists was hampered by international tensions and Soviet secrecy. The American group was allowed only to communicate with the heads of state agencies or scientists approved by the government.
"They always claimed they had zero pollution discharge from their plants, which of course was impossible," Russo says. "It was hard to separate the political statements from reality. But today professional relations between American and Russian researchers are quite close," Russo adds. "It's a very caring kind of relationship. And now that they have the freedom to deal more directly with us, and not have to check everything with Moscow, there's also a new spirit on their side." Despite this new spirit, most Russian scientists still lack the technology and expertise to make complete and accurate measurements and studies. This has led to a tendency to be more "theoretically oriented, while Americans remain more practically oriented," says Frank Schiermeier, head of the EPA's Atmospheric Characterization and Modeling Division.
When researchers from Russo's lab visit their Russian colleagues to test a region's water quality, they usually bring their own equipment, including a hydrolab or gas chromatograph. Or they may take water samples back to the EPA lab in Georgia for metal analysis because it is not possible to measure all the parameters in Russia.
"The Russians often don't have the tools to work with," says Russo. "A [Russian] chemistry lab wouldn't be equipped anything like a Western chemistry lab. For example, they might only be able to test a water sample's pH and temperature. But sometimes you'll find some very brilliant people there who have developed their own equipment. For example, I knew of one scientist who managed to fabricate a dosing apparatus for toxicity tests. So you will find these sterling people in little pockets of excellence," she said.
Today, those labs essential to the Russian government's agenda are the most likely to be supported by it, according to Michael Resnick, head of NIEHS's Laboratory of Molecular Genetics, who has been conducting research with several Russians for more than five years. When visiting laboratories in Russia, he found them "modestly supported by European standards and lacking by American." Because of the general lack of funding for basic research, some labs have even been closed down for short periods. To compensate for such shortages, some American scientists have sent money and other materials to their Russian counterparts, but they "are often concerned it will never get there," says Resnick.
Despite such limitations, Schiermeier says that Western scientists can also learn from Russians; the exchange is not always a one-way street." As an example, he compared the American practice of measuring sulfur dioxide levels in large cities 24 hours a day. In Russia, on the other hand, sulfur dioxide levels are tested for just 20 minutes 4 times a day. "A group at the EPA com-Environmental Health Perspectives ei i pared the results of the two methods and surprisingly found they were not very different," Schiermeier says.

Unenforced Regulations
Internal conflicts in the Russian government continue to impede progress in such critical areas as the environment and health. Yeltsin's violent clash with the Russian Parliament in October 1993 and the election of a high percentage of Yeltsin opponents in December highlight the level of tension between the central leadership and regional representatives. In addition, the president's environmental advisor, Aleksei Yablokov, and the Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources, Viktor Danilov-Danilyan, have had sharp disagreements on how to manage Russia's environmental problems. Such divisions have contributed to the country's slow progress. Yablokov has called for the country's environmental clean-up efforts to be carried out primarily by private or privatized industries, an approach Tsyrlov calls "bureaufantasy." Tsyrlov elaborates: "None of the most polluting factories has been privatized yet, including the steel and paper producers, which are the main sources of dioxinlike compounds. Those enterprises are still owned by the government." Ironically, the Soviet Union's environmental regulations were some of the stiffest in the world, though they were seldom enforced. Factory equipment was often archaic by Western standards and minimally equipped to control emissions. Fines for polluting were also low. In one case, cited by Feshbach in his book, 70 factory directors in the Krasnoyarsk region each had to pay the "equivalent of two packs of foreign cigarettes for illegal dumping" in 1990.
"Since then, I've seen a more consciousness-raising attitude in government but not necessarily in industry," says Feshbach. "Instead, they have a don't-bother-me attitude. Now there's a whole new series of regulations governing hazardous wastes, but the fines don't seem to have risen when you account for the high inflation." Instead of unenforced regulations and fines, one possible solution may involve the voucher program established by Yeltsin as part of his economic reforms in early 1992. By buying shares in companies, for example, Russian citizens have begun to wield some power in factory decision-making and to pressure managers into investing in antipollution equipment and medical improvements, according to Kagan.

Funding Sources
To assist Russian scientists in their research, the Washington-based International Science Foundation (ISF) has recently established a $1 00-million grant program to -~~~~~~-tSs..-~. _ New attitudes. The Syktyvkar Timber Industry Complex, now more than half worker-owned, has reduced air and water pollution and is seeking still cleaner processes. support short-and long-term projects in the basic natural sciences in Russia and the other republics of the former Soviet Union.
Rebecca Clay is a freelance writer in Boulder, Colorado.
Like many other newly privatized companies, the Syktyvkar Timber Industry Complex is seeking cleaner production technologies that would reduce the levels of impurities to be removed. They are planning to sell 25% of the company to foreign investors, presumably to help raise capital to buy such equipment.
In addition, the Fogarty International Center at the National Institutes of Health offers several programs to facilitate cooperative research between the United States and Newly Independent States of the former Soviet Union. For example, the Health Scientist Exchange Program will pay the travel expenses of U.S. scientists to spend two to six weeks in Russia and the in-country travel and subsistence costs for a Russian scientist to work in the United States. In addition, the Fogarty International Research Collaboration Award is paid to those scientists currently receiving an NIH grant who would like to include a former Soviet colleague in that research. The grant, up to $20,000 per year for five years, can cover travel expenses, research supplies, materials, and small equipment for the foreign laboratory.
Dissolution of the tightly controlled command economy has spurred many Russians to become more independent and self-reliant as well as to participate in the nascent democratic movement. For example, environmentalists have run for and won seats on their city and district councils. But most Russian citizens remain preoccupied with the ongoing political tensions in Moscow among Yeltsin, the parliament, and local soviets, as well as the pressing need to secure work, food, clothing, and shelter through this dramatic transitional period. Until the political, economic, and judicial systems can be stabilized, environmental and health improvements will continue to be severely compromised.