Our World

Problems in Russia

As we are starting to discuss and learn more about Russia, the movie we watched the other day sparked some interest. Maybe the movie was old and out of date but it seemed to me that Russia was an extremely poor and unhealthy country. I looked more into the issues and problems in Russia and found that the air pollution is high on the list.

The death of the Soviet union was a strong influence to the poor enviroment issues. The Soviet Union focused more on the growth of the industrial revolution and less on the enviroment issues. In fact, instead of helping the problem, they focused more on putting up more factories and industries to help boost their economy. The problem doubled with the ignorance to the problem and the increasing of factors.

The problems are very current and significant larger cities, like Moscow and St. Petersburg. A huge contributor is the one source pollution, such as their aging powerplants. They are extremely old and lack the proper equipment, which results in high amounts of emissions and toxic waste. Another factor is the automobile emissions such as nitride oxide, lead, and carbon monoxide. Unfortunately, the economic growth will continue to increase the amount of automobiles and therefore increase the pollution.

The numbers are enough evidence that this is occuring. In Moscow 90% of pollution is from automobiles. Right now in 84 cities in Russia, the air pollution is tens times the safety number. In children, levels of respiratory issues are 50% higher than national average. In 1999, in 120 cities the levels of one pollutant is 5 times higher than should be and even worse, 8 cities have exceeded the limits of three or more pollutants.

Enviromental Problems

posted by Anonymous @ 12/06/2006 05:55:00 PM