Glasnost and the Overturning of the Soviet Science of Environmental Health

• In Event: "New Thinking” in the Glasnost Years: Opportunity and Disillusionment

Abstract

We know that glasnost in the Soviet Union was largely triggered by the Chernobyl disaster but this paper offers a new perspective into the environmental awareness that developed in its aftermath, with perhaps the first surprise that the Soviet science of environmental health (=communal hygiene) had been for some time the most advanced in the world in its understanding of the “safe” level of concentration of toxins in air, water, and soil. While during glasnost scientists from within the discipline emerged to publicly criticize it, the critique was of the one-sided success of the science which had excluded more other, more imaginative approaches. They detailed a series of public health disasters which they blamed on these norms and pointed out that most of the senior scientists in the field had no response other than to propose further thresholds for toxins. Communal hygiene suffered a crisis of confidence and began to move in a dramatically different direction.

Author

• Christopher Burton, U of Lethbridge (Canada)