In the mid-90s, the annual volume of plant emissions into the atmosphere was more than 118 thousand tons of sulfur dioxide; per person in the city - about 7 tons. Photo: Ivan Chesnokov. All rights reserved.Karabash, a small town in Russia’s Urals, is known all over the world for its shocking environmental pollution. The copper-smelting plant has been polluting the ground and air of this company town since the beginning of the last century, and in the mid 1990s Russia’s Environment Ministry declared the town an environmental disaster zone.
Both residents and experts put Karabash’s high mortality rate from cancer and respiratory diseases down to the town’s copper plant. In the town’s early years, its population reached 50,000, but this number has gradually decreased to its current 11,000. Local authorities and plant management claim that the environmental situation is getting better, but residents don’t believe them. While 2017 may have been Russia’s Year of the Environment, there’s been no noticeable improvement in Karabash.
“I’ve long since given up drinking the tap water,” says Vladimir Kartashov, who has lived here all his life. “I go to a spring and fill up large bottles.” I’m sitting drinking tea with Vladimir and his friend Vyacheslav Serov in a well-worn kitchen in a typical five-storey block of flats. This neighbourhood is regarded as the newest in town: it has food shops, several cafes where you can have a meal for 200 roubles (£2.20) and a library. The flats are as far away from the smelting plant as possible — until a few years ago they were safe from toxic emissions, but this is no longer the case.
