Issue of New Revised Edtion of the Greenpeace Book "Poisoned Cit

["Greenbase" <greenbas@gb.greenpeace.org>]

Issue of a New Revised Edition of the Greenpeace's Book
'Poisoned Cities'

Moscow, April 14th. The ecological organization Greenpeace
Russia held a presentation of a new revised and updated edition
of the book 'Poisoned Cities'. The book gives the most
comprehensive image of the country's pollution by the worst
poison, known to men, - dioxins. According to the data, given in
the book, dioxin pollution has long ago become a national scale
problem. Many things have changed in the country, but the
authorities still prefer to ignore the approaching danger. It
took Professor Veniamin Khudolei [one of the famous Russian
experts in oncology] and Alexey Kiselev [Greenpeace Russia's
toxic campaign coordinator] three years to collect, systematize
and prepare terrifying findings for publication. 'The idea to
write a book was born, when we understood than no one of those
having power was going to do anything about the dioxin problem',
said Alexey Kiselev. Presenting the new edition of the 'Poisoned
Cities', Greenpeace hopes that new information, some of which is
published for the first time, will enable the Russian
authorities make a first, real step towards the solution of
dioxin problem.

Notes to the editor.

Dioxins Aggression in Russia - Human Target

The contemporary industrial society has a strong enemy, which
many people are not aware of or do not associate danger with. He
seems to have no powerful weapon, he is small and inconspicuous,
but his influence upon the humanity is so great that the
question of whether the life on the planet will at all be
preserved have arisen. His name is CHLORINE. Or, to be exact,
dioxins and dioxin like compounds, which always accompany
technological processes, where chlorine is used. Dioxins are
universal cellular poison, affecting all living creatures, even
if appearing in small volumes. Dioxins are more toxic than
notorious poisons curare,  prussic acid and strychnine. These
compounds are widely spread in the soil, plants and air. They
are stable and do not decay in the environment for many years.
They normally reach human beings through food chains, like:
algae -plankton - fish - man, or soil - plant - animal - man.
According to patriarch of the American ecology Barry Commoner,
dioxins and dioxin like compounds pose the most serious chemical
threat to health and biological integrity of the humanity and
environment. It's obvious that dioxins were never a target
product of the man's peaceful activities, however they've become
steady satellites of many technologies. Almost all branches of
industry may be sources of dioxins; chemical, petrochemical,
pulp and paper, nonferrous metallurgy enterprises and
incinerators are most dangerous here. 

People got 'acquainted' with dioxins in the thirties, when
developing chlorine technologies brought about a professional
disease -  chloroacne [inflammation of sebaceous glands with
recurrences]. Thus the whole thing started. Followed then by:
mass diseases among workers in the state of Mississippi, engaged
in wood preservation by daucides [1936]; dioxin contamination in
the area around the BASF plant in Western Germany  [1953]; agent
orange used by the U.S. army in Vietnam; numerous lesions by
dioxins during explosions at many Soviet and Russian chemical
plants; the explosion at the plant for trichlorophenol
manufacture in Sevezo, Italy [1976], etc. Dioxins incur a lot of
damage, disturbing ecosystems. High levels of dioxins were
discovered in the breast milk of women in the regions where
dioxin-generating technologies are used. Dioxins bring about
malignant tumors; when passed through breast milk, they cause
inborn defects, such as unencephalia (absence of brain), harelip
and other. Among other, more distant, effects of dioxins is loss
of the reproductive ability, as men develop impotence and
decrease of spermatozoon, along with the increased frequency of
miscarriages occurrence among women.

The maximal release of dioxins into the environment was observed
in 60-70s due to increase of production of bleached paper and
other products, where molecular chlorine was used. The war in
Vietnam and incinerators contributed a lot to the scale of
dioxin pollution. For instance, 50 micrograms dioxins are formed
when 1 kg of
polyvinylchlorides [PVCs] is burnt (many kinds of linoleum,
wallpaper, window frame, electric equipment, plastic bottles are
made of PVCs). This amount is sufficient to cause cancer tumor
of 50 thousand lab animals. At the moment there are 7
incinerator plants operating in Russia - in Moscow, St.
Petersburg, Vladivostok, Sochi, Pyatigorsk and Murmansk. The
waste is burnt there at the lower temperature than that needed
to disrupt dioxins (higher than 1150 - 1200 C).

For many years all information about dioxins was kept secret.
>From the year 1968 many countries (USSR not included) started to
remove dioxin data from the secret list. That allowed to rather
fast solve acute problems of shutdown and reprofiling hazardous
enterprises and of dioxin proliferation. However in Russia the
real scale of these problems have not been made public yet.
Moreover, in the U.S. and many European countries output of PVC-
products is diminishing, while in Russia it seems to be
increased. In 1991 all range of PVC products amounted to 242.1
thousand tons, in 1995 this figure reached 309 thousand tons.
Greenpeace carried out a research to determine the most polluted
regions. They are in the first place Povolzhie, Urals, Moscow,
St. Petersburg. The alarming fact is that the Russian limits for
dioxin volumes in the water  (20 pg/l) are hundreds times higher
than American, German, Canadian (0.01 - 0.013 pg/l).

Greenpeace proposes several immediate steps to reduce volumes of
dioxins in the environment, which were already tested in a
number of countries (USA, Germany, Austria, Japan and other).
They include preparing a national antidioxin program,
liquidation of major dioxin sources, end of use of chlorine in
all branches and introducing alternative technologies.