The ailing mother Russia.

Editor's Note: Although environmental health problems exist throughout the former Soviet Union, the focus of this article is on the problems in Russia and the programs addressing them. It is estimated at least one in five Russian babies born today is in poor health. In Moscow, three out of four expectant mothers have some pathology in their pregnancy. Males in one Arctic village are not expected to live beyond their early 40s; women in this village usually do not live beyond their late 40s. Children and adults throughout Russia suffer from respiratory and intestinal disorders at a rate many times higher than elsewhere in the world. Although such grim statistics are in part a result of poor nutrition, inadequate medical care, cigarette smoking, and alcoholism, extensive environmental degradation remains a primary culprit. As the largest of the former Soviet Union's 15 republics, Russia helped direct a massive military-industrial machine that stretched from the Baltics to Central Asia, the Arctic, Siberia, and Eastern Europe. That Soviet legacy continues to threaten the environment and health of hundreds of millions of people as well as future generations. The sources of pollution are many and varied: thousands of factories built in tight concentrations expelling waste into vital waterways; mines working at full tilt to extract raw materials; farms dumping massive amounts of chemicals on crops; nuclear testing sites and power plants that have leaked, exploded, or recklessly disposed of their wastes; and a military that still discards its toxic and nuclear wastes into the seas. Because production was emphasized over efficiency, local environments became over-taxed by the all-powerful monopolies. Science, to help meet the state's goals, was made subservient to its demands. The central government determined the direction of scientific research, kept its nature hidden, and sifted through the results to find those that fit its purposes. Until the late 1 980s, the Ministry of Public Health would not contradict the USSR's industrial practices by revealing that they might be damaging the nation's environment and health. In 1986, immediately after the nuclear reactor explosion at Chernobyl, employees of the public health ministry were forbidden to provide any information about the accident. In addition, it was not until 1988 that the Soviet Union established its first environmental protection agency; the State Committee on Environmental Protection was then promoted to the level of ministry in 1991. Today, Russians must cope not only with a rapid transition …