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Text 6A. The ecology of the Urals

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  1. ECOLOGY
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  3. ECONOMICS AND ECOLOGY
  4. Noun Plurals
  5. Text 3A. Geographical position of the Urals
  6. Text 3B. Industry and mineral resources of the Urals.
  7. Text 3C. History of the Urals
  8. Text 4B. Severouralsk
  9. The magic world of nature and the problems of ecology. What problems are the most important in your town? Your contribution into environmental protection.

When we speak about ecology in the Ural region, we must admit that it is an ecologically poor region. On the one hand the Urals is one of the most beautiful and richest in natural resources regions in the world. On the other hand we must speak about the environmental crisis in the Urals. Air pollution, water pollution and soil pollution are extremely high in the Middle Urals. Plants and factories of Sverdlovsk region produce 7 per cent of harmful industrial waste in Russia. The reason of this dangerous situation is that a great number of industrial plants are concentrated in the Urals. Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Tagil, Kamensk-Uralsky, Magnitogorsk, Chelyabinsk are the biggest centres of heavy industry in our country. Dozens of machine-building plants, chemical engineering works, copper works etc. are located in these centres. Most of the enterprises are old; it's next to impossible to reduce their harmful waste. It is not always possible to use special devices to reduce the smoke, dust or harmful gases.

The main polluters in the Urals are enterprises of mining and chemical industries, ferrous and non-ferrous metal plants: Nizhny Tagil Metallurgical Plant – 51 per cent city’s waste; Plastic mass Plant – 35 per cent, Visokogorsky Mining Works – 5,2 per cent, Chemical Plant – 3 per cent, Ural Vagon Plant – 2,5 per cent. They emit different harmful substances, carbon monoxide (CO) and sulphur anhydride are the most widely spread.

Dangerous gases enter the atmosphere, they mix with water in the air and form a cocktail of acidic chemicals. Finally this killing mixture falls back on the Earth as acid rain. Acid rain became one of the most serious pollution problems in our region. It causes damage or death of forests, lakes, wildlife, humans and slowly destroys everything. Acid rain has practically ruined grass and pine forest in the suburbs of Revda and Pervouralsk. Because of harmful changes in the soil lots of poisonous mushrooms appeared there. They look like ordinary mushrooms, that is why they are very dangerous.

The most polluted city in the Urals is Nizhny Tagil. The amount of harmful industrial waste into the atmosphere is 150 thousand tons a year. More than 15 substances exceed the air contamination limits. The degree of air pollution by dust is 50 times more than permit limits; by nitrogen oxide – 20–30 times in the centre of the city and along the roads; by naphthalene – 20–100 times.The metallurgical plant is located in the very centre of the city, it pollutes everything around. The ecology of the city influences the health both of children and grown-ups. People suffer from asthma, bronchitis, tuberculosis. The health of people, especially children, is in danger. The result of it is that 20 per cent of the population live in the zone of environmental disaster; 40 per cent – in the zone of environmental emergency; 40 per cent – on highly polluted territories.

Industrial enterprises use lots of water and pour their waste into rivers and lakes. The Isset, the Chusovaya, the Pyshma are greatly polluted, because purifying systems are not effective. Only 2 of 18 thousand Sverdlovsk Region rivers contain water suitable for drinking. In Nizhny Tagil yearly about 159 million of cubic meters of industrial wastewater are discharged into the rivers near and in the city; 18 million of them are not cleaned, 130mln – half-cleaned. They contain more than 60 thousand tons of pollutants. Because of the waste of the cement plant the concentration of calcium (Ca) and magnesium (Mg) in the water the plant 24 times exceeds permit limits – that’s why we have hard water. The Tagil River is constantly polluted with copper (Cu) and zinc (heavy metals). In 2010 the concentration of Zn was 13 times more than permit limits; of Cu – 40 times.

The problem of soil pollution is very important in the Urals. The soil is being degraded very quickly because of acid rain, chemical fertilizers, industrial erosion. The amount of solid wastes is about 8 milliard tons. In Sverdlovsk Region out of 19,5 million hectares 69 thousand hectares of land are worked out and cannot be used for planting. More than 9 thousand hectares of land are covered with solid wastes. In Nizhny Tagil 10 per cent of territory is occupied by dumps. The soil is also very much polluted by industrial emits. Especially vast territories are polluted within 3 km away from NTMP. And the fact is that 60 per cent of the city population live on this territory. The Urals is rich in mineral resources. Oil, coal, gold, platinum, etc. are extracted in the Urals. And vast territories around the deposits are unsuitable for life.

People realized the horror of radioactive pollution after the Chernobyl tragedy in 1986. But the first radioactive explosion took place in Kyshtym, near Chelyabinsk, at the chemical enterprise ‘Mayak’ in September, 1957. Vast territories of Chelyabinsk and Sverdlovsk regions were polluted with radiation. Many people had to move from their native places, many of them died from oncological diseases.

So, the environmental degradation in the Urals continues to accelerate. Urgent measures to improve the ecological situation should certainly be taken. But this problem is not easy to solve.




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Text 5A. A great invention of a Russian scientist | Find the English equivalents in text 5A. | Text 5C. Yevgraf Stepanovich Fedorov | Text 5D. Alexander Andreevich Auerbach | Read the text and retell it in English | Read the text and retell it in English | Read text 5E and translate it. | Read the article and translate the main idea into English. | Find a phrase or a sentence in text 6A which means the same as the following. | Text 6B. Air pollution |


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