"Obsolete Pesticides" are farming chemicals which have passed their sell-by date, been forbidden by law or are simply no longer needed. They sit in the corners of warehouses and barns the world over, often in corroding barrels from which they seep into the soil and groundwater. Experts believe they pose the biggest threat in Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia, where uncounted tonnes remain from the era of centralised planning. Jan Betlem, a Dutch expert on "OPs," filed this report from Ukraine

Photos: JAN BETLEM THE GOOD EARTH?: a Ukrainian family pushes a cart full of pumpkins in Vishneve village outside Kiev. Many Ukrainians depend on their fall harvests to get them through the winter, but few understand the dangers posed by disused pesticides and herbicides

Travelling goes fast in an official vehicle of the Ukrainian Parliament: no roadblocks and no police stops for us. Therefore, we arrive quickly at the proposed project area: Poltava Oblast, some 300 km southeast of Kiev. The area is selected by the local environmental group Sustainable Development and Ecological Education Centre, Dovkillya (SDERC). Valentyna Pidlisnyuk, the manager of Dovkillya and also a professor at the Agriculture University of Kiev, and Vitaly Zcubulsky, the former head of the Policy Development Department of the Ministry of Environment and now a member of the same NGO, are my expert guides. They know the problem and they know their country. In short order, we sit around a table with representatives of the local authorities in Poltava Oblast. On a farm in the town of Svichkarevo. One of the spilled chemicals is Granozan, which contains mercury compounds and was manufactured by the Soviets and exported to several Communist states, including countries in Asia such as Cambodia. "The situation is very serious," says a local environmental official. "Large quantities of old pesticides are slowly leaking into the ground." With scarce resources, he has carried out an inventory in his area and found that on 35 sites,the amount of stored obsolete pesticides comes to some 1,000 tonnes. "Yes, of course, DDT is included as well, but also obsolete pesticides containing heavy metals like mercury have been identified," he says. Repackaging does not help; the chemicals are so corrosive that within two years the product will eat through the new barrels. Because many warehouses contain a mix of old and newer pesticides of many different types, the situation can be literally explosive: products can react with each other and spontaneously combust. Consequently, roofs and walls burn up, exposing the remaining stocks to rain, allowing the packaging to decay even faster. Rural warehouses often lack a concrete floor, meaning the chemicals penetrate unimpeded into the soil and groundwater. "Our rivers are still clean but we fear the worst is yet to come," the environmental official says. "Eco-tourism is a real source of income for our towns, but in a poisoned environment we can forget about developing this industry any further. That's why we made a priority of cleaning up these old, obsolete pesticides. However, we lack the technical expertise and knowledge and the means to repack the old stocks." After the meeting at City Hall, we travel in old Ladas to some warehouses. The necessity to intervene becomes evident. In only some cases are the chemicals marked with a sign reading "Danger — hazardous chemicals!" Behind the simple wooden door of the old farm shed, we find a mess of old barrels and boxes of different sizes. Gaping holes in the iron sheet roof allow light and rain to enter. Rough wooden planks partly block the windows. Pools of rainwater are mixed with a witch's brew of obsolete pesticides. The floor is nothing but a layer of gravel collected from the woods. It's obvious that these poisoned puddles are slowly but certainly penetrating the soil. Russian labels indicate that these pesticides date back to the Soviet period. Once they were seen as a magical tonic that would multiply crop yields, now they comprise one of the country's biggest environmental threats ever. On the shed's exterior, we notice chemical streaking, a clear sign that the pesticides have penetrated through. With every rain shower, the pesticides wash little by little down into the soil. Soviet legacy The pesticides are remains from a grey past. During the Soviet period it was centrally decided that the Ukraine needed a certain quantity of pesticides every year. This amount was centrally ordered, produced somewhere else in the Soviet Union and shipped to the Ukraine. Necessity wasn't the issue. Surpluses were never returned; it was not possible at the time. Consequently, the stockpile grew and farmers stored it as best they could, sometimes by burial. After the break-up of the Soviet Union, this seemingly inexhaustible supply of pesticides dried up. However, the poorly stored obsolete pesticides cause an increasing danger to the environment and public health. As a rough estimate, one third of Eastern Europe's known stockpiles of obsolete pesticides consists of so-called POPs or persistent organic pollutants such as DDT and HCH. These materials do not break down quickly in the natural environment, and therefore can survive long travels. They have even dispersed as far as the North Pole. Abnormally high concentrations of DDT have been detected in the fat tissues of polar bears and human inhabitants thousands of kilometres from the places where DDT was originally used. POPs cause hormonal imbalances and neurological defects and recent research in Canada has demonstrated that POPs affect the immune systems of animals. These highly toxic materials are currently stored in substandard warehouses, which in many cases have no legal owner. Many of these properties were passed up during privatisation because nobody wanted to inherit expired pesticides. In other cases, the stocks are owned collectively by hundreds of owners because nobody wanted to accept the individual risk of future legal claims or because this is simply the way the properties were transferred. No international support EXPOSED: Located near the town of Svichkarevo, the shed which once sheltered these obsolete pesticides from the elements was broken down by neigbouring residents who were collecting building materials. Ukraine today faces a difficult challenge in managing this toxic inheritance. Besides a strong national policy, the country needs political power, technical assistance and external funding to solve the problem. According to its own estimation (no detailed inventory has been taken according to international standards), Ukraine currently has some 20,000 tonnes of obsolete pesticides. But there has been little international assistance for even the remedial step of stopping the toxins from spreading further into the environment. European partners, including the EU, are afraid to touch this wasps' nest, as they know Central and Eastern Europe have probably the biggest store of obsolete pesticides in the world. During the coming decades it will cost billions of euros to locate and manage these stocks in an environmentally safe manner (through re-packaging, further treatment or destruction). This funding is simply not available. Other international organisations (various United Nations services, including the UN Environment Programme and the Food and Agriculture Organization) already operate in other regions in the world but due to lack of manpower and budget, the creeping toxic danger in Central and Eastern Europe suffers from neglect. Although the will exists at a national level to tackle the problem, the country faces many other, pressing problems. Some don't see the seeping pesticides as an urgent problem. Until it is detected in the ground and drinking water and consumer groups ring the alarm bell, it gets very limited attention. The next day Crimea Republic, better known as "the Crim," is on the programme. We again travel in the Parliamentary car, and the driver clearly knows the spots of interest: locations along the highway where fruit and vegetables are sold by farming families from the surrounding villages. Whole families gather at the roadside to sell two buckets of cherries, or a similarly small quantity of peaches, one of the few ways of earning money. They taste delicious and replace my favoured travel drink Coca-Cola, which is unavailable during this trip. After several hours and hundreds of kilometres on the road south, we reach the Crim around midnight. The next day we contact the local authorities, and hear a similar story as the one in Poltava Oblast. "Two years ago, the local services put the available means together and a large quantity of old pesticide stocks was repacked and then centrally stored. Unfortunately, we now observe that these containers are starting to leak again and a 'centralised catastrophe' of a much bigger size is happening," said the head of the agricultural division of a republican ministry. "We are fearful for our export position," he said. "This part of the country produces wines of an internationally recognised high quality." What the Crimeans need urgently is an assessment of the problem and technical advice about how to permanently repackage the toxic materials. The very same day we visit some winegrowers along the Black Sea coast, on the south of the Crimean Peninsula. Pesticides are used in very limited quantities these days, we are told. The products used now come from western manufacturers who practice "product stewardship," we are told: sometimes the suppliers will take back surplus obsolete pesticides. But nobody has told the winegrowers what to do with the old, obsolete pesticides that are still stored in their sheds. A business manager of the winegrowers' association shows us one of the storage sheds. Sitting less than a 100 metres from the seashore, it is a closed shed with a good roof and appears well maintained and managed. The wineries here are privatised and their owners invest in the business. "We can accept no scandal with obsolete stocks," notes the business manager emphatically. Therefore they have safely stored away the pesticides that they inherited from the past, he said. During our inspection of the warehouse, I see amongst others "technical DDT," a highly concentrated form of the chemical that was diluted locally before application and use. Despite the claims that the problem is under control, it's hard to believe that these toxic stocks will not end up in the Black Sea. "It is just a matter of time," says my companion Valentyna. "Unless we repackage and remove the material from here". Our suspicions are confirmed by Irina Rudneva of the Biological Institute of the Southern Sea in Sevastopol, Crimea Republic. "Certainly, we have detected high concentrations of these old pesticides in the sediments of the Black Sea and we find them in increasing amounts in the tissues of sea organisms like fish," Rudneva said. "Unless we remove the material from here, it will finally end up in the sea." The very same evening we discuss a possible approach to the problem, which should make available the means to repackage the old pesticides in order to reduce their direct threat to human health and the environment. Total destruction of obsolete pesticides in dedicated incineration facilities in Western Europe costs about USD 4,000 per tonne. The estimated USD 80,000,000 that would be needed to clean up the whole of Ukraine will take a long time to collect. Until that time emergency measures should be taken to stop the poison from spreading into the environment. If it were up to Valentyna it would start tomorrow. — Jan Betlem is an obsolete pesticides management specialist with Tauw Environmental Consultants in the Netherlands, the only consultancy in Europe operating an obsolete pesticides programme

Soviet legacy No international support 'Certainly, we have detected high concentrations of these old pesticides in the sediments of the Black Sea and we find them in increasing amounts in the tissues of sea organisms like fish.' - Irina Rudneva of the Biological Institute of the Southern Sea Top Top Top Top Top Top Top Top