Officials have said that Murmansk Region ranks among those with the most polluted air in the country, according to a new report published by Rospotrebnadzor, Russia’s federal consumer rights agency.
The report, entitled “On the state of sanitary and epidemiological wellbeing of the population of the Russian Federation in 2018,” paints a stark picture of drier, hotter weather conditions conspiring with industrial pollution all while higher levels of toxins are being measured in area soil.
Specifically, the report says that heavy metal quantities in soil found in residential zones of the Murmansk Region exceed legal measures by three times. Chemical substances found in playgrounds and other areas geared toward children exceeded hygienic standards by the same amount.
The report assigns a wide net of blame for this pollution. Industrial toxins arising from metallurgical endeavors, fuel and energy production, chemical refining, the manufacture of building materials and construction itself, says the report, all share culpability.
The Murmansk region also falls in the top ten of those in Russia wherein the highest levels of air pollution was measured — identified in the report as areas where pollution levels measured more than five times the legal limit.
For the rest of this article: https://bellona.org/news/industrial-pollution/2019-06-russias-murmansk-region-among-countrys-10-most-polluted-says-government-agency