Pollution Destruction of dam 'had effects like Chornobyl'

The destruction of a large Ukrainian dam in 2023 triggered a "toxic time-bomb" of environmental harm, a study has found.

- Ajit Niranjan

Lakebed sediments holding 83,000 tonnes of heavy metals were exposed when the Kakhovka dam was blown up one year into Russia's invasion, researchers found.

Less than 1% of these "highly toxic" heavy metals - which include lead, cadmium and nickel - are likely to have been released when the reservoir drained, the scientists found. They said the remaining pollutants would leach into rivers as rains wore down the sediment, threatening human health in a region where river water is widely used to make up for shortages in municipal supplies.

The lead author, Oleksandra Shumilova, said the scale of the environmental impacts was comparable to the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

"All these pollutants that were deposited on the bottom can accumulate in different organisms, pass through the food web, and spread from vegetation to animals to humans," said Shumilova, a scientist at the Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries. "Its consequences can be compared to the effects of radiation."