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Poland Environmental Conditions and Crises
In 1991 Poland designated five official ecological
disaster
areas. Of the five, the densely concentrated heavy
industry belt
of Upper Silesia had suffered the most acute pollution. In
that
area, public health indicators such as infant mortality,
circulatory and respiratory disease, lead content in
children's
blood, and incidence of cancer were uniformly higher than
in
other parts of Poland and dramatically higher than
indicators for
Western Europe
(see Health Conditions
, this ch.). Experts
believed that the full extent of the region's
environmental
damage was still unknown in 1992. The situation was
exacerbated
by overcrowding; 11 percent of Poland's population lived
in the
region. With 600 persons per square kilometer, Upper
Silesia
ranked among the most densely populated regions of Europe.
In
1991 the region's concentrated industrial activity
contributed 40
percent of Poland's electrical power, more than 75 percent
of its
hard coal, and 51 percent of its steel.
A variety of statistics reflect the effects of severe
environmental degradation in Upper Silesia. In 1990 the
infant
mortality rate was over 30 deaths per 1,000 births, nearly
five
times the levels in some countries of Western Europe; some
12,000
hectares of agricultural land had been declared
permanently unfit
for tillage because of industrial waste deposition; and
between
1921 and 1990 the average number of cloudy days per year
had
increased from ten to 183. Average life expectancy in
southern
Poland was four years less than elsewhere in the country
(see Health and Welfare
, this ch.).
Water and air pollution affect the entire country,
however. A
1990 report found that 65 percent of Poland's river water
was so
contaminated that it corroded equipment when used in
industry.
After absorbing contaminants from the many cities on its
banks,
the Vistula River was a major polluter of the Baltic Sea.
River
water could not be used for irrigation. In 1990 about half
of
Poland's lakes had been damaged by acid rain, and 95
percent of
the country's river water was considered undrinkable.
Because
Polish forests are dominated by conifers, which are
especially
vulnerable to acid rain, nearly two-thirds of forestland
had
sustained some damage from air pollution by 1990. In 1989
Polish
experts estimated total economic losses from environmental
damage
at over US$3.4 billion, including soil erosion, damage to
resources and equipment from air and water pollution, and
public
health costs.
In 1988 about 4.5 million hectares, or 14.3 percent of
Poland's total area, were legally protected in national
and
regional parks and reserves. But all fourteen national
parks were
exposed to heavy air pollution, and half of them received
substantial agricultural, municipal, and industrial
runoff.
A special environmental problem was discovered when
Polish
authorities began inspecting the military bases occupied
by
Soviet troops for forty-six years. Uncontrolled fuel
leakage,
untreated sewage release, noise pollution from air bases,
and
widespread destruction of vegetation by heavy equipment
were
among the most serious conditions observed when
inspections began
in 1990. The government of Prime Minister Tadeusz
Mazowiecki was
late in pursuing the issue with the Soviet government,
however,
and in 1991 the Soviet Union continued its longstanding
refusal
to pay fines and natural resource usage fees required by
Polish
law. In 1992 the Poles dropped all demands for
compensation as
part of the withdrawal protocol
(see Threat Perception
, ch. 5).
Data as of October 1992
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