Russia Steps up Efforts To Phase Out Leaded Gasoline

by Diahanna Lynch Fall 1996

Lead ingestion poses a serious health risk for children in the industrialized world. When cars running on leaded gasoline emit lead particles into the air, these particles fall to the earth, remaining in soil and dust for years. Children, who often explore their environment by putting objects into their mouths, are likely to ingest the lead dust. They also tend to absorb lead at a much higher rate than adults. Ultimately, high levels of lead poisoning can cause seizures, comas and sometimes death. Even at low levels, lead in the body can result in mental retardation and impaired growth.

The American public regards US success in phasing out leaded gasoline as an indisputably good public health policy. In the last year, the World Bank and the United Nations have also targeted this issue, calling on their member countries to consider phasing out leaded gasoline as a relatively simple and straightforward step toward protecting the environment and public health.

Few Russians, however, consider lead poisoning a public health priority. True, Russia is overwhelmed by a host of massive and complex environmental problems, such as nuclear contamination and drinking water pollution. Yet in a country where 73% of the population lives in urban areas, gradually eliminating leaded gasoline is a concrete, relatively inexpensive and technologically feasible solution to a serious environmental health threat.

Russia's initial efforts to halt the use of leaded gasoline are encouraging. Legislation now under consideration in the State Duma sets an ambitious target for complete phaseout by the year 2005. In 1995, eight of Russia's 25 oil refineries manufactured only unleaded gasoline, comprising 40% of the gasoline produced in Russia last year.

Yet these efforts will likely stall without additional incentives. Targets have been set, and ignored, in the past. As the economy improves and demand for gasoline increases, Russia will need to expand its refinery capacity just to maintain the current proportion of unleaded gasoline production.

The legislation under consideration should incorporate mechanisms and incentives for achieving the goals it mandates. To accomplish this, the public must raise the issue with its elected representatives at both the national and local level.

Last December, the Center for Russian Environmental Policy and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) issued a bi-lingual report titled "Leaded Gasoline Phaseout: A Step Towards Sustainable Development in Russia," and conducted a workshop in Moscow on leaded gasoline phaseout.

Forty top environmental health experts, policy makers and industry representatives gathered for the meeting to address the major technical issues associated with leaded gasoline phaseout in Russia. These included: health effects of lead poisoning, modernization of oil refineries, vehicle maintenance issues and tax and financial policies. Russian oil refineries and auto manufacturers are enthusiastic about phaseout, but concerned about the lack of mechanisms to facilitate increased production of unleaded gasoline. In fact, they noted that the Russian Ministry of Fuels and Energy has created a federal program that calls for the ultimate phaseout of leaded gasoline, but that this program, Fuel-Energy for 1996-2000, has fallen far behind on implementation.

A February session of the Ecological Security Commission of Russia's National Security Council was devoted to heavy metals and moved toward remedying the problem of how to implement phaseout. Its primary recommendation was to establish a higher tax on leaded gasoline than unleaded. This would enable unleaded gasoline, which is more expensive to produce than leaded, to be sold for an equivalent or lower price at the pump. This policy has been introduced in a number of countries with great success in stimulating the use and production of unleaded gasoline. It also provides a source of revenue for modernizing and expanding refinery capacity to produce unleaded gasoline.

Ultimately, though, for such incentives to become reality, the Russian environmental and public health communities-both the governmental and nongovernmental-must put phaseout on their priority list. The most striking comment from the December workshop came from a distinguished senior scientist at the Institute of Oil Refining. He urged workshop participants not to be lulled by new governmental promises to phase out leaded gasoline, stressing that similar efforts, started 20 years earlier, stalled due to the lack of awareness and understanding of the problem on the part of both officials and the public. He emphasized that the political will to remove this threat from Russia's cities would emerge only by educating Russians about the health impacts of lead and other

Diahanna Lynch is the Washington, DC representative for the Center for Russian Environmental Policy. Center for Russian Environmental Policy:Vavilova St. 26, Moscow 117808, Russia; ph: 7-095-952-2423, fax: 7-095-952-3007 Natural Resources Defense Council:1200 New York Ave. NW, Suite 400, Washington, DC 20005; ph: (202) 289-6868; fax: (202) 289-1060