Study shows acid threat faces Europe

Press, 7 October 1988, Page 34

Study shows acid threat faces Europe

NZPA-Reuter Helsinki Rivers and lakes in large areas of Europe are threatened with increasingly high acid levels caused by airborne pollution, according to a study by Finnish scientists. The study was presented to a working party of a United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (E.C.E.) group, monitoring long-range air pollution.

“There is no doubt that the problem is serious and I do not think any E.C.E. country denies that,” said Juha Kamari, of Finland’s National Board of Waters and the Environment, which made the survey with the Finnish Agriculture Ministry. The report says risk areas include central Europe, parts of Spain, the Nordic countries, Poland, Romania and Britain.

The report does not cover the biological effects of “acidification” but Kamari said high acid levels could prevent fish reproducing and had

eliminated whole fish populations in some rivers. In Norway, for example, 70 per cent of 1000 lakes surveyed were found to be acidic.

Environmental problems from acidification have been experienced in many European countries from the Soviet Union to the Irish Republic and from the Nordic countries to northern Portugal, the report says.

There have also been problems in eastern Canada and the north-eastern United States.

The working group, meeting in Espoo near Helsinki, will pass the report to the executive body for the E.C.E.’s Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution, signed in Geneva in 1975.

Most of the signatories agreed three years ago to cut 1980 sulphur emission levels 30 per cent by 1993.

“After 1993, when all these reductions have taken place, some models indicate that at least the problem will level off,” said Kamari.