Russian Town Of 70,000 So Polluted, Mayor's Solution Is To Close It Down And Move - Independent

[hatrack]

Harsh winters, polluted air, crumbling apartment blocks – the residents of many Russian towns might feel that they have cause for complaint. But in Chapayevsk, a town of about 70,000 inhabitants in European Russia, the mayor himself has suggested a novel way of solving the town's problems – abandon it. You can hardly blame him – 96 per cent of all children there are deemed unhealthy. Chapayevsk, close to the Volga river and the city of Samara, is home to factories that produced chemical weapons for many years, and is blighted by air and soil pollution. According to the newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta, at a round table meeting on the environment in Samara this week, the town's mayor, Nikolai Malakhov, said that resettling the town's residents would be an "ideal solution" to Chapayevsk's problems.

The town was founded about a century ago and was named Chapayevsk in 1929, after the Bolshevik Civil War hero Vasily Chapayev. It was the site of a chemical weapons factory that churned out mustard gas and other deadly weapons in industrial quantities. The factory also made conventional bombs and mines. According to factory veterans, chemical warheads were made by pouring mustard gas solution from a teapot into the bombs, with the toxic chemicals frequently spilling over into factory drains. Over time the city's water became contaminated with dioxins and other poisons. Today the factory produces herbicides, not chemical weapons, but the pollution in the air and the ground is there to stay.

A study undertaken by American scientists in 2005 found that not only was the air in Chapayevsk contaminated with dioxins, but also locally produced fruit and vegetables, as well as the meat from locally farmed animals. The more local produce that people ate, the more likely they were to get ill. The scientists found dioxin levels in the ground as high as in those parts of Vietnam sprayed with the infamous Agent Orange during the US campaign there. According to Nezavisimaya Gazeta, the fatality rates from throat, liver and kidney cancer in Chapayevsk are three times higher than in nearby cities. The American study found a whole range of sexual abnormalities in Chapayevsk boys, who typically have a late start to puberty.

With the factories no longer providing work, the town also has a high level of unemployment, and one of the highest levels of heroin use in the country, which is contributing to the start of an HIV epidemic. So the mayor's plan sounds like a good one. But a spokesperson at the local parliament denied that there was any serious talk of relocating the town's inhabitants.

EDIT

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/europe/russian-town-is-so-toxic-even-the-mayor-wants-it-closed-down-808489.html

[fed-up]

1. k/r nt

[Nihil]

2. Only to be expected ...

... seeing as it's on the same landmass as Chernobyl and everyone knows
that you can't have that level of cancer rates & abnormalities without
a connection to nuclear power ...
:eyes: