Bad Air Behind the Curtain

On March 18, voters in East Germany went to the polls. For the first time in decades, they were able to vote for candidates with different party affiliations and different views. Among the points of diversity was one accord: in their platforms, all the new political parties have incorporated promises to protect the environment.

It's a politically prudent decision. The first public opinion survey taken by Western pollsters showed that East Germans rank the environment highest among their concerns. They seem to have good reason for thinking that way.

East Germany was so tightly sealed behind the old Iron Curtain that the magnitude of its environmental problems was virtually unknown in the West until late 1989, although neighboring countries certainly had reasons to know something was wrong. Moving air and water don't respect political boundaries, and what moved out of East Germany was cruddy. But it was not a subject East German officials would discuss with outsiders.

According to a recent issue of the journal Science, East Germany's environmental problems previously were not a safe subject for discussion within the country either. When the journal's reporter met officials of the State Environmental Inspection Office in Halle, an industrial city in the country's southwest corner, they proudly told him that the closet in which the charts documenting regional air pollution were kept no longer had to be locked.

The newly available charts told something of a horror story. Several industrial centers, like Leipzig, Halle, and Bitterfeld, were shown in a dull red color. That was the coded indication that sulfur dioxide concentrations in the air were greater than 375 micrograms per cubic meter and particulate levels exceeded 1000 micrograms per cubic meter. To get an idea of just how bad that is, consider that the minimum air quality standard the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency accepts as tolerable is 80 micrograms of sulfur dioxide and 75 micrograms of particulates per cubic meter. Over broad areas surrounding the industrial centers, amounting to nearly a third of its territory, East Germany's air holds a load of pollutants at least twice that permitted by the U.S. standard.

The pollutants of concern are typical products of burning the high-sulfur brown coal that fuels East German industry. They are especially destructive, combining to produce particles coated with sulfuric acid. These nasty specks lead to the acid rain that destroys forests and chews away stone and steel. Once inhaled, they also damage respiratory systems. In Leuna, a town near Halle, 60 percent of the population suffers from respiratory ailments at any given time.

It wasn't that East Germany had no regulations governing pollutant emissions; it was that the regulations had no real force. For example, most coal-burning plants are required to have filters. Only one manufacturer in the country makes such filters. They're fairly good, too---good enough to be in demand in the West, which is where nearly all of them are sold. The East German government believed the country had a greater need for hard currency than clean air, so less than a quarter of the factories that could use the filters had been able to install them.

Even when the laws were enforced, the effect was not helpful. The petrochemical complex in Leuna had to pay a whopping fine equivalent to $23.75 million dollars last year for soiling air and water, but the economic system was such that cost didn't count. Reaching centrally designated production goals was all that mattered.

Now things are changing. East Germany is no longer cut off completely from the world community, and its citizens are making their concerns felt. If they can clean up their air, we'll all breathe a little easier--even if we live in Alaska. East Germany was cut off only politically and economically; environmentally, they were always with us, sharing spaceship Earth.

In Alaska, we can observe that every winter. The chief source of arctic haze is the smokestack industries of central and eastern Europe, including East Germany. If their new politicians follow through on the promises to improve their local environment, ours will change for the better too. Less sulfur and soot into German air will mean clearer skies over the entire Arctic.