RUSSIA: Amur river pollution a concern for people in Russia's Far East region

Record ID: 216877

  • Title: RUSSIA: Amur river pollution a concern for people in Russia's Far East region
  • Date: 17th October 2007
  • Summary: BOAT ON SHORE OF AMUR RIVER VARIOUS OF LOCAL NANAI MAN SITTING BY RIVER AMUR RIVER
  • Embargoed: 1st November 2007 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: Environment / Natural World
  • Reuters ID: LVA409OLIACL3592JD5J3YPAC8B1
  • Story Text: Local people living close to the Amur river in Russia's Khabarovsk region complain of ailments which they blame on Chinese pollution of the river water.
    The Nanaitsy, a native people of Russia's Far East region, have traditionally lived along the banks of the Amur river, relying largely part on the river's stock of fish to make a living.
    But in the recent years the situation has changed, with fears that the waters of the Amur river are polluted.
    Local people in the village of Troitskoe in the Khabarovsk region have been forced to stop fishing in the Amur river. They claim that industrial enterprises built on the Chinese side of the river have been polluting its water. This pollution, they add, has brought about a variety of ailments among the population.
    A survey, completed over the last year by local health officials, shows an increase in the number of oncological diseases among the Nanaitsy, with a subsequent rise in fatalities.
    The situation is now being monitored by a United Nation's team from the world body's Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme.
    They have come to Troitskoe with Russian health officials to carrying out a health monitoring programme for the local Nanaitsy population. The research will involve taking blood samples from local residents of Nanai villages on the Amur river. Blood tests are set to be carried in laboratories in Russia, Norway and Canada, and the expectation is the tests could show when and with what chemicals local residents may have been contaminated with.
    Konstantin Beldy, a local Nanai poet, was one of the first to volunteer to take part in the research.
    "When the environment got polluted my health got worse as well, my head doesn't work properly, and my eye sight deteriorated too. And it is all because of the water we drink," he said, after giving a blood sample at a local hospital.
    "The project we have discussed is a project that will go for three years and we have planned to start in January, and the frame of the cost is around two million dollars. That's what we are planning," said Lars Otto Reiersen, of the U.N.'s Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme.
    Similar research has been conducted in the region of Chukotka.
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