Chemical pollution of the Ros River, Ukraine

Problems

• Insecticide pollution of the Ros River

  June 9, 2019 as a result of an accident in the village. Zbarzhevka, Vinnitsa region, several hundred liters / kilograms of plant protection products were dumped into the basin of the Dnieper tributary - the Ros River. To date, this is perhaps the most resonant road accident in the entire history of Ukraine, as a result of which the area was contaminated with agrochemicals. The specificity is that the Ros flows through 5 regions of Ukraine, the area of ​​​​its basin is 12.6 thousand square kilometers, the ecological state of the river directly affects at least 500 thousand people, and the emergency itself occurred a few kilometers from the border of the Kyiv region.
  In addition, the Belotserkva district state administration, which was the first to publish information about the release of chemicals on its Facebook page, initially reported that an insecticide (Nurel D) had got into the tributary of the Ros, which in a matter of hours destroyed all the fish and other inhabitants of the reservoirs of the Pogrebishchensky district, where the village is located Zbarzhevka. Therefore, it is not surprising that the emergency instantly acquired the status of an all-Ukrainian one, the Bila Tserkva decided to stop water intake from Ros for a day, and the forecasts of some experts sounded notes of ecological Armageddon.
  
  However, the end of this "pesticide thriller" was relatively happy. A day later, the State Food and Consumer Service reported that only 12 pesticides were found at the accident site - 8 herbicides, 3 fungicides and one plant growth regulator. Their toxicity is much less than that of insecticides, which are essentially nerve agents. Specialists of the Ukrainian Hydrometeorological Institute and the Institute of Colloid Chemistry and Water Chemistry of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine identified chemicals and came to the conclusion that only 150 kilograms of active substances were dumped into the ecosystem - phosphorus- and sulfur-containing compounds with a short decay period (up to 3 days). And on June 11, the Experimental and Testing Toxicological Center of the “Scientific Center for Preventive Toxicology, Food and Chemical Safety named after Academician L.I. Medved” put an end to history, stating that the water from the Ros River does not pose a danger to drinking water supply. According to the results of a number of other studies, pesticide residues were also not found in water samples, including in the epicenter of the state of emergency - in Zbarzhevka.
  
  By the way, there were no confirmations of the regional scale mortality either. So, in fact, the Zbarzhevsky incident ended without casualties among representatives of the animal world. At least officially. But the fact remains. For Ukraine, this is an unprecedented accident.