Residents of the cities of Leninsk-Kuznetsky, Kiselyovsk and Prokopyevsk in Siberia have shared the eerie sight of seeing black snow covering their streets. These three separate cities located within the Kemerovo coal mining region of southwestern Siberia have been covered in a dense dark layer of toxic snow, contaminated by coal dust that is now also present on the surface.
The Siberian inhabitants of these cities have shared images of their grimy and gloomy landscape on social media, prompting at least one Twitter user to wonder: “Is this what snow looks like in hell?”
Where does this black snow come from?
The Kuznetsk Basin, which covers a strip of approximately 70,000 square kilometers, is one of the largest coal mining areas in the world, responsible for approximately 60% of Russia’s total coal production; much of this percentage is exported. The environmental price that the local cities and their environment have to pay in the shadow of these open-pit mines is colossal. The proximity of the mines to these Siberian cities has led to inherit “a difficult ecological situation from earlier times”, in the words of the Governor of Kemerovo, Sergei Tsivilev. “Open pit coal mines have moved to cities.”
Thus, coal dust from open pit mines is the cause of the problem . Once these particles hit the air, they mix with the snow giving it this particular black hue.
Consequences
According to activists, the knock-on effects on health are devastating , with life expectancy in the Kuzbass region up to four years lower than Russia’s national average, while disease rates rise more than elsewhere.
Coal dust particles contain a wide range of harmful agents, including lead, mercury, nickel, tin, cadmium, mercury, antimony, and arsenic, to name a few. TB rates in the Kuzbass region are almost twice the national average. Kuzbass is also home to some of the highest rates of infantile cerebral palsy in Russia.
The director of the Prokopyevskaya coal plant claims that the black snow was the result of a broken shield at the facility , which exposed the coal dust to the atmosphere, but also said that emissions inevitably leak out and that “we cannot address the coal dust in the streets. “
Kemerovo region deputy governor Andrei Panov also suggested that the problem is not just the coal industry, noting that car exhausts also contribute to pollution.
But critics and political opponents say that the lack of environmental protections in Siberia constitutes a long-standing systemic problem; This is not a recent development linked to isolated errors.
According to Vladimir Slivyak, co-chair of the Russian environmental advocacy group Ecodefense, in the absence of strong environmental standards that are enforced locally, the best approach to solving the problem could be a foreign boycott of Siberian coal, urging the Russian authorities to take the law seriously. contamination.
A tough contender
Russia’s coal industry is huge. There are some 150,000 miners in almost 130 coal deposits throughout the country and we are currently facing a boom in commercial mining, so it seems unlikely that there is a tendency to curb this situation.
Meanwhile, as the debate progresses, in Siberia, toxic black snow continues to fall.
Image credit: Voilok / Instagram
