“KHIMPROM” is closed but dioxins are still present

At the beginning of the 90s after the phenol catastrophe in Ufa (when phenol was discovered in the water pipes in the amount, exceeding the maximum permissible values many times) the “greens” started raising an alarm. It turned out that along with phenol the great number of dioxins was accumulated at the Ufa’s plant “KHIMPROM”, which was the main initiator of that ecological catastrophe. Dioxins represent the absolute poison, accumulating in organisms, slowly killing them. The volumes of the accumulated dioxins at “KHIMPROM”, especially nearly the territory of the workshop N19, where the herbicide 2,4D was once manufactured, were comparable with the number of dioxins in the Italian town of Seveso, earlier declared the zone of a large ecological catastrophe.

Under the public pressure the plant gradually started to stop its activity. At the beginning of 2000s the plant was closed according to the decision of the Government RB. The sanation of the plant’s territory began in 2008.

The director of the state unitary enterprise “The Scientific-Research Institute of vital functioning security RB” Faiz Khizbullin reported about the results of the check-up of the plant’s territory for the presence of dioxins and other pollutants at the ecological forum, held in Ufa on October 12-14. The samples of the soil, taken from 10 wells on the territory of the plant, have shown still high content of dioxin on the surface – up to ten thousand nano-grams per one kilogram of soil. There are no dioxin standards in Russia but in the USA it is allowed just about 100 nano-grams of dioxins per one kilogram. Therefore the analysis shows that though the plant is closed, the problem with dioxins isn’t yet solved up to the end in Ufa.

The most dangerous thing in this situation for the city is that the subsoil waters flow not deeply on the plant’s territory – just 1-3 meters from the surface and it means that the threat of dioxin’s penetration and their further spreading from this territory is still alive.