Greenpeace: Russian City A Toxic Hell

In a country littered with polluted sites, the Russian city of Dzerzhinsk may be the most contaminated of all, with water and soil poisoned by a dozen chemical plants, an environmental group said Friday.

Birth defects are commonplace in the central Russian city of 300,000, according to government figures cited by Greenpeace International.

The group said its own research shows life expectancy is just 42 years for men and 47 years for women, far below the national average.

Greenpeace has been pushing to have the city, 250 miles east of Moscow, declared an environmental disaster zone, but so far the cash-strapped Russian government has done little besides offering gas masks to residents who want one.

“This city is an environmental time bomb,” Yevgeny Usov of Greenpeace’s Russian office told reporters.

Local authorities also are hard-pressed for cash, with many of the old plants working at a fraction of full capacity because they are unable to sell their products.

The city has at least seven major chemical plants, as well as a number of smaller ones, that produce synthetic materials.

The concentration of toxic agents exceeds permissible norms by several thousand times at some sites, and a lake near the city has been described by Greenpeace as the most heavily poisoned in the world.

“The cleanup may cost billions of dollars,” Usov said.

The Dzerzhinsk plants have discharged large quantities of dioxins - highly toxic chemical compounds that can cause cancer in humans in even small quantities.

Many residents receive salaries equivalent to only $100-$200 a month, and therefore rely heavily on vegetables they grow in their gardens, which are often heavily contaminated, said the Amsterdam-based Greenpeace.