The Death of the Aral Sea
by Bridget Morris
The Aral Sea represents one of the Soviet Union's worst
environmental catastrophes. With the Sea having shrunk to one-
fifth of its former size, the fishing industry once supported by
the Aral has been destroyed over the past 20 years. Much of the
once-fertile land around the Sea has turned into desert and salt
flats. Due to chemical pollution and erosion, the health of
local people has deteriorated drastically and agricultural
productivity in the region has plummeted. The birth rate is
falling while infant mortality is rising. Only 38 of the 178
animal species of the region are still extant.
In August 1988, a group of prominent Soviet scientists,
writers, doctors, agricultural experts, hydrologists and
geographers toured the Aral Sea region on the "Aral-88
Expedition." They concluded that the region is rapidly dying and
will become a toxic wasteland in just a few years unless
immediate action is taken to restore it.
The roots of destruction
The expedition members determined that the Soviet
government's attempt to make the entire region a large-scale
independent cotton producer is the main cause of the Aral Sea
catastrophe. This effort can be traced back to 1949, when the
government promoted large-scale land reclamation programs to
increase agricultural productivity. At the end of the 1960s, the
Ministry of Water Management (Minvodkhoz) of the U.S.S.R.
ordered the Central Asian republics to increase the water
available for irrigation by taking it from the rivers, streams
and other sources which normally feed into the Aral Sea. The
planners did not consider the effect this might have on the
Aral, even though several scientists warned that the Sea would
shrink. The Minvodkhoz policy resulted in the
construction of thousands of kilometers of new drainage and
irrigation systems, dams and water reservoirs throughout the
Central Asian republics. At the same time, land used to raise
livestock and to grow traditional crops such as apricots,
subtropical fruits and wheat, were planted with cotton.
Thousands of tons of chemical fertilizers and pesticides were
dumped onto the cotton fields to promote high yields. The
Minvodkhoz received billions of rubles for its Central Asian
cotton project, and gained an enormous vested interest in the
project's continuation.
Dimensions of the water shortfall
From 1990 to 2000, 12-15 cubic kilometers of water are
expected to flow into the Aral Sea per year. But 34-47 cubic
kilometers of water evaporate from the Aral Sea each year.
Consequently, the Aral is expected to lose 250 of its current
450 cubic kilometers by early in the next century.
Over 640 cubic kilometers of water have already been lost
from the Aral Sea over the past 20 years. The water level has
dropped by 13 meters. Fishing towns and ports that once dotted
the Aral Sea coast are now dozens of kilometers from the water.
Members of the Aral-88 expedition who flew over the Aral Sea
Basin saw old piers, ports and all kinds of fishing boats lying
on desert sands and salt flats many kilometers away from the
receding sea. A.A. Tursunov, chief of the laboratory at the
Institute of Geography at the Academy of Science of Kazakstan,
noted, "The now-evaporated portion of the Aral Sea covers 26,000
square kilometers, two-thirds of which is salty sand and dirt."
The town of Muynak, once a bustling village surrounded by
lush green vegetation, has been devastated by the shrinking sea.
Located on the edge of the Aral, Muynak once produced millions
of pounds of fish for sale to the Soviet government. Now 50
kilometers away from the coast, it is surrounded by salt flats
and arid land. Few residents remain.
The problem of the water siphoned from the Aral Sea is
exacerbated by aging and poorly constructed irrigation and
drainage systems throughout the Central Asian Republics. The
drainage system malfunctions and large amounts of water leak
out. The runoff of water causes soil erosion, salinization of
large areas of fertile land and waste. (The Minvodkhoz
never even considered a water conservation policy.) Some
scientists estimate that 40 percent of the water is lost from
the irrigation, drainage and water reservoir systems in the
Central Asian Republics. N.G. Minashin, an agricultural
scientist, notes that in 1960, "4-6,000 cubic meters were used
to irrigate one hectare. But now it takes 10,000 cubic meters."
The Aral's shrinking has affected the local climate. The Sea
contributed vital moisture and humidity to the air. The yearly
evaporation of sea water into the air kept the temperature
moderate most of the year and provided plenty of rainfall. As
the Aral Sea shrank, the air lost its humidity and moisture.
Now, the climate is much drier and the temperature is subject to
much greater variation.
Poisoned waters
The uncontrolled use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers
on the cotton fields of the Aral region has polluted and
salinized the soil of the surrounding land and the sea itself.
Chemicals contaminated the soil, leaked into the groundwater and
were transported into rivers, lakes, streams and the Aral Sea
from both runoff and the faulty irrigation and drainage systems.
The result: billions of tons of poisonous salts have covered 2.6
million hectares of the Aral Sea bottom. Tens of millions of
tons of salt and chemicals, many of them toxic, evaporate into
the air from the Aral Sea and are spread for long distances by
the wind. The salt and chemical dust has been measured 2,000
miles away in the air over Byelorussia and Latvia.
"The Aral Sea as an independent ecosystem died 13-15 years
ago," states N.V. Aladin, a biologist and associate at the
Zoological Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R.
The surviving animal species are not even native to the Aral Sea
region, but were transplanted there from other parts of the
Soviet Union.
Yet the spraying of chemicals and pesticides continues in
many areas. The chairman of the Committee to Save the Aral
Sea--the Union of Writers of Uzbekistan, P. Shermuckhamedov,
says, "Associates at the Hydrometeorological Center of
Uzbekistan analyzed the composition of water and concluded that
pesticides such as B-58, metaphos, butyphos, hexachloran,
lindane, DDT, DDE are still heavily used in spite of bans.... In
1988, there were 82 cases of high-level hexachloran pollution
and 32 cases of lindane pollution." Many of these chemicals are
found in large amounts in the major rivers, the Syr Darya and
Amu Darya.
One result of the water pollution is unsafe drinking water.
The amount of poisonous chemicals and salts in the water is a
"murderous dose" according to A.D. Deriglazov, assistant dean at
the Second Moscow Medical Institute. He says that 80 percent of
the population of the Central Asian republics lacks access to
clean water.
Exposure to toxic chemicals is inevitable since the chemicals
sprayed on crops end up in the water and locally raised produce
and meat. In the Chimkent region, for example, the meat contains
eight times the maximum permissible level of pesticides, and the
fruits and vegetables contain 16 times the maximum permissible
level of pesticides.
Uncontrolled use of pesticides and chemicals has had a
devastating effect on the health of many people in the Central
Asian region. The incidence of certain diseases increases
sharply in populations right around the Aral Sea. For example,
residents of Aralsk, located on the edge of the Aral, suffer
from typhoid and hepatitis at rates 29 times higher than the
national average. Jaundice and dysentery are also prevalent in
the region. Health problems are exacerbated by insufficient
medical facilities. In Uzbekistan, only one out of five
hospitals has running water and only three out of ten have
plumbing. There is a massive shortage of hospital beds.
Children have suffered the most. The mortality rate among
children less than one year of age is 98-100 per 1,000. Child
mortality is higher in the Central Asian republics than in
Paraguay and 20 times higher than in Japan.
Many children will not nurse at their mothers' breasts
because their milk is 3-4 times saltier than the norm due to the
salinization of the region, which has increased the amount of
salts in food and water. Refusing to nurse, many become
malnourished and sick.
The cotton economy
The environmental costs of abandoning traditional farming
systems for one based solely on cotton have not been offset by
economic benefits for the people of the region. Much of the
money earned from the cotton harvests has not been reinvested in
the local economy. The central government in Moscow determines
how to use all funds.
Over half of the 20 million rural residents of Central Asia
are involved in the cotton industry; there is almost no other
type of farming left.
Earnings from cotton exports are used to buy wheat, dairy
products, meat and fruits--all of which were at one time
abundantly available from the Central Asian republics.
While the production of cotton continues to increase, the
standard of living for the average rural family continues to
fall. A typical family of 7-8 earns 200-250 rubles per month,
and average family incomes are decreasing. Vegetables and fruits
purchased at the local markets are more expensive than those
sold in Moscow. The typical Central Asian rural resident eats an
average of 8 kilograms of meat per year, far below the national
average of 65 kilograms per year.
Cotton dominates the society. Children and the elderly work
in the fields. The children often work for long hours and miss
many days of school. Local party and government members who
spoke with members of the Aral-88 expedition denied that
children miss school, since child labor is against the law. But
local residents confirmed that it happens on a regular basis,
and the expedition members frequently saw children working in
the fields. In Turkmenistan, only 15.5 percent of the school-age
children were in class during the cotton harvest in 1987.
Working in cotton fields is a hot and physically demanding
job. Many field workers, including children and pregnant women,
suffer from dehydration. Field workers are also exposed to large
doses of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, leading many to
contract cancer, anemia, dystrophy, allergies and jaundice.
A bleak future
Government officials of the Central Asian republics refuse to
take responsibility for the Aral crisis and instead point
fingers at each another. The Supreme Soviet rhetorically
supports environmental protection and cleanup programs, but
little has been done. In fact, the Soviet government assigned
responsibility for reviving the Aral to the Minvodkhoz,
the very institution responsible for the sea's demise. The
Minvodkhoz has the same old ideas and plans: to reroute
waters from Siberian rivers into the Aral Sea, to construct a
series of dams and canals to accomplish this and to continue
outdated land reclamation programs.
The Aral-88 expedition members argue that the Minvodkhoz
program will waste 55-60 billion rubles while furthering the
environmental destruction of the Aral. They say the Aral Sea and
the surrounding area need immediate emergency aid. They propose
three steps to gradually revitalize the region. First, water
used for irrigation of cotton fields should be reduced by 20
percent, allowing more water to flow into the Aral Sea, and
water should be rationed.
Second, the Aral-88 expedition members call for the
reinstatement of traditional farming and an end to the cotton
monopoly in the region. Cotton is a very thirsty crop; it has
not been profitable or beneficial for the Soviet Union, and
certainly not for the residents of Central Asia. The farmers of
the region should be able to take advantage of the agricultural
reforms such as long-term leasing and self-management. All
farmers should be given the right to determine what they will
produce. Cotton fields should be replaced with pastures for
livestock, fruit orchards, wheat fields and vegetable fields.
The crops and products which worked well in the past should be
reintroduced. Central Asian Republics must work together to
restore and revitalize the region.
The third and most controversial step will be to restore the
original plant life to the defoliated Aral Sea bottom.
The expedition members also call for the Soviet government to
take steps to restore and protect the health of the Central
Asian peoples. They say it should launch a campaign to prevent
people from drinking the local water and should ship bottled
water into the region for popular consumption. The government
will need to invest billions in building better medical
facilities and in providing more physicians and uncontaminated
food products. The Aral-88 members say their proposal should be
considered an emergency aid program, and note that the Aral Sea
catastrophe may cost much more than the Chernobyl disaster (8
billion rubles). For those in the region, there can be no doubt
as to the urgency and massive scale of the crisis. T. Timirbayev,
the first secretary of the Muynak Regional Committee of the
Communist Party of Uzbekistan emphatically stated, "I support
one of the suggestions made by the mission: it is necessary to
proclaim that Muynak, Aral and Kazalinsky are ecological
disasters and to send the necessary medicines and food products
to these regions immediately and in the proper order to resolve
the supply problems. We need emergency aid."
This article is based on "The Aral Catastrophe," an
article which appeared in Novy Mir Magazine, No. 5, 1989.
Bridget Morris is a Russian
translator and a researcher and analyst of Soviet affairs.
http://multinationalmonitor.org/hyper/issues/1990/09/morris.html
WHAT HUMAN HAIR CAN TELL ABOUT ENVIRONMENTAL POLLUTION AT THE ARAL SEA
Carole Dauberschmidt, Michel Yegles, Robert Wennig
Laboratoire National de Sant?, Division Toxicologie, Centre Universitaire,
L-1511 Luxembourg
The environment of the Aral Sea region has changed dramatically during the last
40 years. Shortsighted irrigation practices let the Aral Sea surface shrink to
one half of the original surface, causing a 90 % decrement of air humidity and
an increment of salty dust in the air by windblown sediments. Moreover, the
remains of water reaching the Aral Sea were contaminated with fertilizers and
pesticides used in the intensively cultivated fields. At the same time, the
state of health of people living in the affected regions deteriorated
considerably. Many children showed an impairment of respiratory, renal,
digestive, and blood systems. At the National laboratory of health in
Luxembourg, trace elements in hair specimens originating from the Aral Sea
region of Kazakhstan (n = 6) were measured by X-ray fluorescence spectrometry.
Concentrations of the element Cl were up to 4 times higher compared to values
found in European hair. Analyses of Kazakh drinking water samples (n = 12)
revealed that concentrations of chloride and sodium, as well as the number of
bacteria in specimens from the Aral sea region were far above maximal permitted
levels in Europe. This indicated that surface water was highly contaminated with
salt originating very likely from the former Aral Sea ground. The high sodium
concentration and high number of bacteria in drinking water could be at least
partly responsible for the impaired state of health of the local Kazakh
population. In addition, chloride could theoretically be sequestered into hair,
when consumed daily due to high concentrations in drinking water. These findings
were supported by the fact that children living in Almaty, were asymtomatic. The
former Kazakh Capital is situated more than 700 km east of Aral Sea region and
is supplied with clean fresh water from the near-by mountain range.
Another hypothesis to explain the high levels of the element Cl in Kazakh
hair samples could be the high organochlorine (PCBs, DDT, lindane) body burdens.
A Swedish team had measured levels of organochlorines in blood of Kazakh
children (n = 12) being 1 to 2 orders above Western Europe reference values. To
check this hypothesis, a method for analyzing organochlorine compounds in hair
had to be developed. Preliminary results indicate that there are no significant
differences between organochlorine concentrations found in Kazakh (n = 2) and in
European (n = 3) hair analyzed so far. Measured concentrations of lindane, DDT,
PCB Nos. 138, 153, and 180 were between 0.5 to 5 pg/mg hair. Further studies are
scheduled in order to elucidate if and to which extent relations between blood
and hair organochlorine concentrations can be found.
http://www.tiaft.org/tiaft98/fri/p/f_p_13.html
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