Armenia: Environmental change spurs respiratory diseases

Marianna Grigoryan 10/20/06

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 café chairs per resident, and café 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.

Posted October 20, 2006 © Eurasianet