ENVIRONMENT-RUSSIA: Spent Russian Rockets Leave A Toxic Legacy

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Andrei Ivanov and Judith Perera

MOSCOW, Oct 19 1998 (IPS) - The process of disarming the world of its thousands of surplus nuclear missiles has thrown up a new and dangerous environmental problem for the Russian communities who live near Soviet-era military rocket sites.

The liquid fuel used by Soviet era missiles and rockets — unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine (UDMH) — is both highly toxic and hard to eradicate from the environment once leaked, warns Dr Lev Fedorov of Russia’s Union for Chemical Safety.

Only recently have the Russian authorities admitted the real danger to the environment and human health of this organic chemical compound, which remains toxic for 20 years and easily moves through soil and water.

Large areas of Russia are contaminated with this chemical at sites where missiles are stored and dismantled, and in regions where the first and second stages of rockets crash to the ground, he says.

Equally dangerously, as it decomposes, UDMH gives off nitrosodimethylamine, which causes cancer, and the highly toxic chemical tetramethyltetrazene.

“UDMH is most dangerous if inhaled,” says Fedorov. “But it can also be absorbed by the digestive system, the skin, and mucous membranes. It causes various symptoms, especially in children.

In and around the worst affected sites there “are no completely healthy children,” says Fedorov. Infections, allergies and anaemia are widespread.

“There are a lot of children with increased sensitivity to infections, especially viral,” he notes. Women report increased miscarriages, premature births and children born with brain damage.

Chronic poisoning can damage the liver, central nervous system, heart, blood formation and urogenital systems. “Anyone working with UDMH for more than six months will suffer liver damage,” he says.

Experts have already found 110 polluted sites, totalling 20 million hectares.

Traces of UDMH and its products of decomposition have been found in vegetation, soil and sediment, considerably exceeding maximum permissible levels. They have also been found in fodder, vegetables, and domestic animals.

UDMH and similar propellants were used in rockets launched across the former Soviet Union for decades, from Baikonur in Kazakhstan to Plesetsk in the Arctic and Kapustin Yar in the Far East.

From the mid-1960s hundreds of rockets and missiles were launched, powered by UDMH, including the famous three- and four-stage Proton space capsule launchers. Between 1967 and 1997 214 were launched from Baikonur, but only 187 successfully.

The first and second stage rockets, discarded after they accelerate the main rocket to the high speeds necessary to put capsules into orbit, crash to the earth, spilling unused UDMH everywhere.

“Ballistic missiles represent a serious danger to ecology and health in many regions of the former Soviet Union,” says Fedorov.

“The use of UDMH as liquid propellant has resulted in extensive ecological damage. Vast areas where the first stages of Proton, Kosmos-3M and Tsyklon-3 rockets fall are polluted by toxic propellant and its metabolised products.”

Between 1995 and 1997 alone just 10 Kosmos-3 launches from Plesetsk dumped ten first stage rockets over a single area, spilling around 667 kilos of UDMH each time.

Yet hundreds of such launches were recorded across the Soviet Union between 1967 and 1997 — no less than 400 Kosmos-3 first stages were dropped at high speed on the Russian Komi and Nenetz regions. Since 1977 more than 100 first stages have fallen on Me zenskii near Arkhangelsk, 900 kilometres north of Moscow.

Even some stretches of the open sea where first stages have crashed have been affected.

Another problem is caused, ironically, by the disarmament process. Many of the biggest missiles are now being dismantled after thirty years’ Cold War service.

For example one typical unit of 52 heavy SS-18 nuclear missiles, deployed in Kazakhstan at Derzhavinsk and Zhangiz-Tobe, was transported to Nizhniy Novgorod in central Russia in 1995-1996 for dismantling. That left 6,000 tonnes of UDMH for disposal.

Similarly another 130 SS-19 nuclear missiles, returned to Russia when Ukraine, like Kazakhstan, renounced its post-Soviet nuclear legacy, left some 4,000 tonnes of UDMH in Ukraine — which has reportedly disappeared.

UDMH was also used for air defence missile systems deployed all over the former Soviet Union and in submarine based missiles.

The Russian Navy, much criticised for its careless handling of nuclear waste, is also charged with storing thousands of tonnes of UDMH at submarine bases on the Barents Sea at Yagelnaya, Olenya and Ostrovnoy, and on the Sea of Japan and Pacific coasts at Rybachiy and Pavlovskoye.

Last but not least are the sites where UDMH is manufactured, at Salavat in Russia’s semi-autonomous Bushkir Republic, and Angarsk in the Irkutsk region, near the Mongolian border.

Studies into the effects of UDMH spills on human health have just begun. Two villages were studied: Tarasovo near Plesetskii and Dolgoshelje, near Mesenskii, both in the Arkhangelsk region.

Some 79 per cent of the inhabitants examined in Dolgoshelje and 90 in Tarasovo showed medical effects. Liver damage was evident in over 50 percent and blood disorders in up to 44 percent.

A massive 78 percent of Dolgoshelje residents were found to have nervous system problems. The rate for suspected clinical depression was an equally disturbing 80 percent — five times more than the average for the Arkhangelsk region.

Fedorov says disarmament brings further dangers as the technology is dangerous and the risk of accident is considerable. He is calling for better ecological monitoring of affected areas and more studies to investigate health effects.

“People have a right to know the risks they are facing,” he says.