Pesticides in Kazakhstan
Pesticides are stored in unprotected, shabby premises, often with leaking roofs, dumped on a heap
28.06.2005 |Green Women
Accumulation of large quantities of banned, unwanted and obsolete pesticides is a serious problem for agricultural sector of the Republic of Kazakhstan. Large quantities of unaccounted pesticides are stored in the country. Imported and unused in 60-80-ies pesticides are stored in unadapted, shabby premises, often with leaking roofs, dumped in a heap. Underground waters carry these pesticides into rivers and other bodies of water causing significant damage to the environment.
Considerable amounts of pesticides are found on the areas of completely destroyed storehouses,
which are not mentioned in the official materials. Sanitary-epidemiological units of Kazakhstan’s health protection Agency conduct monitoring of health support environments which can contain some data sets related to pesticides subject to utilization and conservation.
These data sets suggest that despite 5-6 times decrease in pesticides burden on soils overall pesticides pollution problem remains quite acute. Higher than nationwide average residual pesticides pollution levels are identified in Kostanai, South-Kazakhstan and Western-Kazakhstan regions, where preliminary estimates indicate that stocks of pesticides are not particularly large.
Kazakhstan mainly imports pesticides. “KZ”, the only pesticide produced in Kazakhstan (Pesticide Ltd., Shymkent) is not a POP. Key foreign suppliers dealing with local companies include Ufachemprom (Russia), Zeneka (United Kingdom), Uniroll Chemical (USA), Novartis (Switzerland), Ronne Paulenic (France), Monsanto (USA). Volume-wise 2.4 D-amine salt imported from Russia is the leader in pesticides shipments to Kazakhstan.
However, considering that Kazakhstan has transparent borders with Russia, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan it is conceivable that in addition to registered Kazakhstani pesticides importers there are also companies illegally shipping pesticides to Kazakhstan including persistent organic pollutants. For example, a number of openly sold chemical household items include DDT and GCCG components and were smuggled to Kazakhstan. In the beginning of 2004 a preliminary inventory of obsolete and unwanted pesticides was completed.
It was undertaken within the UNDP/GEF Project «Initial Assistance to the Republic of Kazakhstan to Meet its Obligations under the Stockholm Convention on POPs». The goal of the inventory was identification of old abandoned, unregistered, destroyed pesticide storage sites; identification of POPs compounds among stored pesticides and their mixtures; quantification of unwanted pesticides and their packages. «This work is not as that simple as it could seem at first sight. Pesticides are often stored as mixtures requiring identification (through expensive physical and chemical analysis techniques).
The storage sites themselves are sometimes difficult to find considering their destroyed and abandoned state. The total amount of pesticides and their mixtures found during the inventory of “Selkhozkhimiya” former storage sites, former kolkhozs and sovkhozs storage sites and agricultural aviation airfields is 1500 tons. Estimation of obsolete pesticides buried in closed and functioning burial grounds has yet to be made. Finally, they all will have to be extracted from the burial grounds and disposed of in accordance with the requirements of the Stockholm Convention on POPs.
The fulfilled work is the first after the USSR break up but still only a preliminary inventory of pesticides in local storage sites», - report of the results of the preliminary inventory of obsolete pesticides in Kazakhstan contains this information.
Within the undertaken inventory of obsolete pesticides 140 storage sites have been inspected; only 57 are functioning – 83 former storehouses of «Selkhozkhimiya» are completely destroyed. Mixtures of pesticides with soil or mineral fertilizers are often found on their areas. On average, the share of unidentified pesticides mixtures is 72% of the total amount of found pesticides. It could be presumed that these mixtures may also contain POPs pesticides.
Apart from pesticides the issue of package disposal has also to be addressed. According to the preliminary data of the national inventory the number of packages to be disposed of exceeds 300 thousand. The packages can be dangerous for human health since they are widely used for household purposes (food and water storage). The population knows little of this danger.
The main reasons leading to accumulation of obsolete pesticides are: ban of purchased compounds due to high toxicological or environmental hazards; fall of demand for pesticides due to their low efficiency, low storage stability and high fire risk; damaged packages; expiration of application time.
In connection with large amounts of obsolete pesticides stored in Kazakhstan, the issue of their treatment with further disposal is highly topical. The inventory showed the importance of designing, construction and maintenance of burial grounds for toxic wastes. Currently, Kazakhstan has only two functioning burial grounds (in Kustanai and Pavlodar oblasts).
It is important to search for pesticides storage facilities owned by private entrepreneurs and assess conditions of these facilities (currently owners of such storage facilities are not registered, access to facilities is limited, while external observations indicate unsatisfactory state of the facilities. Also, in Kazakhstan there are abandoned pesticides warehouses).
The preliminary inventory of obsolete pesticides within UNDP/GEF Project allowed identifying a number of problems in agricultural chemicals management. They are listed below:
- Lack of framework for obsolete pesticide management and lack of a state body responsible for this management.
- Lack of special laws or relevant by-laws.
- Shortage of special chemical laboratories; weak technical capacity of existing laboratories.
- Existing pesticide storage sites often does not meet requirements and standards for hazardous chemicals storage.
Considerable amounts and poor condition of unwanted and banned pesticides, bad storage conditions and package state, possibility of unauthorized access to pesticides and uncontrolled use of packages for household purposes, large risks for human health and the environment, especially at the time of natural disasters and man-caused accidents (floods, fires, large accidents, etc.) put forward the issue of obsolete pesticides to the list of top-priority environmental and social problems in Kazakhstan, which require immediate and efficient solution.
Considering the possibility of POPs travel in different media all over the world they pose a threat not only to our country but also to the world community, and present a global challenge to environmental safety.
Ratification of the Stockholm Convention on POPs by the Republic of Kazakhstan and implementation of obligations arising from it will facilitate the solution of unwanted and obsolete pesticides problem in Kazakhstan.
Ecological News Agency “Greenwomen”,
Almaty, Kazakhstan
Tel./fax: +7-3272-75-49-96
E-mail: greenwomen@nursat.kz
http://www.greenwomen.freenet.kz
