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Armenia: Environmental change spurs respiratory diseases

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  • Armenia: Environmental change spurs respiratory diseases

    ARMENIA: ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE SPURS RESPIRATORY DISEASES
    Marianna Grigoryan 10/20/06

    EurasiaNet, NY
    Oct 20 2006

    A dramatic increase in respiratory diseases over the past several years
    means that Armenia is now struggling to breathe, physicians and public
    health specialists say. While government representatives downplay
    the problem, environmentalists point to desertification as the cause.

    Between 2001 and 2005, the number of respiratory diseases registered in
    Armenia increased by 45 percent to just over 161,000 cases, according
    to statistics from the Ministry of Health.

    Andranik Voskanyan, one of Armenia's chief lung specialists, believes
    that the real number of individuals suffering from respiratory
    diseases, particularly asthma, is much higher than officially
    reported. Voskanyan estimates that the number of such cases has at
    least doubled in the past decade. He is also seeing respiratory disease
    strike at an earlier age. "A few years ago the youngest child suffering
    from asthma was five or six ... [but] we now find this disease also
    among one to two-year-old[s]," said Voskanyan. "This is the reaction
    of the body to the environment."

    Voskanyan believes that shrinking green areas, industrial emissions,
    lack of quality control for imported fuel, and increased emissions
    from automobiles have played a central role in the increased number
    of respiratory diseases.

    Yerevan pediatrician Anahit Mazmanyan agrees. "Almost all newborns
    have allergies, symptoms of rickets [inflammation of the spine],
    which was a rare phenomenon in the past. These are phenomena that
    one should pay great attention to," commented Mazmanyan.

    Environmentalists and public health specialists say a major factor
    behind the trend is galloping desertification. Recent United
    Nations (UN) data reports that 82 percent of Armenia's territory
    is at risk of desertification and 26 percent is at risk of extreme
    desertification. In response, the UN recently called on the government
    and civil society groups to develop programs to address environmental
    issues.

    "Armenia today has opted for a peculiar way of desertification -
    an asphalt-concrete desertification," commented Karine Danielyan,
    a former minister for environmental protection who now chairs the
    For Sustainable Human Development non-governmental organization.

    "Construction in gross violation of the rules of urban development
    is going on everywhere at the expense of green areas."

    In Yerevan, where fashionable cafes have mushroomed recently in city
    parks, trees today cover only 2 percent of the land area, according to
    government statistics. In 2005, the amount of so-called "green area"
    available per resident in this city of 1.1 million stood at 4.2 square
    meters, a threefold decline from 1990 levels.

    With fewer trees, fewer ways exist for removing emissions from cars
    and factories, according to environmentalists. At the same time,
    greater quantities of dust enter the atmosphere as the soil erodes.

    "Soon it won't be the amount of green area per resident that will
    be calculated, but the number of cafe chairs per resident, and cafe
    tables per family," quipped one elderly Yerevan resident who regularly
    strolls in the capital's parks.

    Experts note that during the Communist era, Yerevan ranked as one
    of the Soviet Union's most polluted cities. The closure of nearby
    factories in the 1990s failed to make much of a difference. In
    addition, an energy crisis during the early 1990s, largely connected
    to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, led to a rash of tree cutting
    throughout Armenia. Today, even though the energy crisis is long past,
    large-scale logging continues.

    According to data provided by the Ministry of Environmental Protection,
    the quantity of dust, sulfur, dioxide, ethyl benzol, nitric oxide
    and other substances, including lead, in the atmosphere over Armenia
    exceeds admissible concentration levels.

    Experts deem the situation dangerous. "Monitoring has collapsed in
    recent years. Very few materials are studied now," said Danielyan.

    Carbonic acid and ozone, for instance, are no longer monitored in
    Yerevan, he added.

    As yet, no government policy exists to address the issue of tree
    loss. Officials maintain that attention is being paid to the country's
    general environmental welfare.

    "There are certain government resolutions and decrees aimed at
    protecting the environment, in particular those envisaging control
    over car emissions," said Aram Gabrielyan, head of the Environment
    Ministry's Department for Environmental Protection. "Certain measures
    are being taken in terms of control, but I don't think that the
    shrinkage of green areas can contribute to air pollution and
    respiratory diseases," Gabrielyan claimed.

    Editor's Note: Marianna Grigoryan is a reporter for the Armenianow.com
    weekly in Yerevan.
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