Let’s visit the notorious Karabashsky copper complex.
The source of sulphur dioxide itself – the poisonous substance that destroyed all plants around. By the way it is often used for fruits conservation to prevent their darkening.
Those red strips look even scary.
Here they pour out everything that does not raise in the air. Some car comes and with no ceremonies they spill something looking like mercury on the ground. If it can be called the ground, it’s like another planet…
In 20 minutes of being here you start couthing. Rain does not dry out on clothes but leaves some spots. How do people work here? And why? They earn only 400-500 dollars and almost all of them are bald… And we don’t mention the ecology…
The ground 15 km around is greenish. Swamps, little rivers, lakes are red. Mountains and fields have no plants. But not so far from here is the Ilmensky state reserve – a very beautiful place!
It’s so sad!
Location: Karabash, the Chelyabinsk region
Nature will heal this place; the workers and their families are another story.
How many years does the nature need to heal itself, I guess at least 120 years without touching it. Money is the source of ALL evil on the planet earth. People are addicted, they don’t mention the consequences… Will we ever learn?
Rafe. I think laziness in the form of a lack of self discipline is the basic cause of all evil deeds.
I lived in a Copper Mining Town North of Tucson before it closed. I remember the smoke stacks pumping out nasty crap for as long as I could remember. Couple years later, EPA forced them to change over to a flash furnace. Most of the kids born after 60′s who also raised their children there have mental problems, birth defects, and host of different kinds of cancer. I had large sarcoma cancer and pelvic kidney. So, yea now I wonder how people do it now days
The workers have had there hair fallout!! Wow, we need to make a living, but at what price.
“With no ceremonies they spill something looking like mercury on the ground”. Thats funny.
They should have had the spilling of the toxic substance ceremony first.
Town?
We had the same thing with our Asarco copper plant here in Washington State, my brother worked at the EPA at that time. You could see in aerial photographs how around the plant, nothing grew. It was so bad they just shut the whole thing down.
I wish nature would allow me 1st
I ve been to the place, this factory works from the Tzar times, and the sulfuric acid exhausts actually made the vicinity to look like marsian surface. The photos here don’t represent the 1/10 of it
Not suprising, such plants (as all raw material manufacturers/refineries) earn huge money. And being environmental costs money, for example they would need to tear the whole thing down and build a new one.
But this is Russia – the most capitalist country in the world. So to expect this poison factory to close down would be the same to expect the “patriarch” Kirill’s villa in a protected forest area to be bulldozed. Just won’t happen.
Russia is not handicapped by EPA ‘tree huggers’ like the USA. People have to eat, otherwise they will starve to death. If given a choice do you starve to death or work and provide for family?
America do not know living conditions outside in other countries.
I thought copper was hugely profitable. The owner could at least pay the workers enough to buy a second home away from this town.