Russia ‘close, to an ecological disaster’
Birth defects up, life expectancy down in some areas, says senior official
MOSCOW — Pollution has pushed Russia to the edge of an ecological catastrophe, increasing the incidence of congenital birth defects and reducing life expectancy in some areas, a senior environment official has said.
Mr Alexei Yablokov, head of the environment commission of President Boris Yeltsin’s Security Council, said in a newspaper interview deformities among newborn babies had risen by between 1 and 3 per cent a year for the last few years.
Mr Yablokov, former head of the Soviet branch of the Greenpeace environmental group, told the daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta on Friday that industrial pollution was to blame.
"For the last three to tour years, we have seen a stable growth of 1 to 3 per cent each year in the number of congenital deformities in newborn babies," he said.
"This means we have passed a fateful point aid are falling into the abyss of ecological catastrophe."
He did not say where he had obtained the data or how many babies were born each year with deformities.
He said life expectancy had fallen in some areas, most of them industrial regions, to two years less than the retirement age. In Russia, women retire at 55 and men at 60
As an example, he said the average life expectancy was less than 50 years in the town of Nikel on the Kola peninsula In northern Russia.
Other badly polluted towns or cities were Prokopyevsk, Bratsk and Kemerevo in Siberia, and Nizhny Tagil in the Ural Mountains.
Mr Yablokov was named adviser to Mr Yeltsin on the environment in August 1992 but quit after a few months. He now advises Russia’s Security Council, an inner circle of leaders headed by Mr Yeltsin.
Also on Friday, the World Health Organisation and researchers from Russia, Belarus and Ukraine said the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986 had caused a significant increase in the number of cases of cancer In children in their countries. — Reuter.
Source : The Straits Times 26th Mar 1995
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