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FSU, THE LEADER IN EASTERN EUROPE CLEANUP
By Nancy Cook Lauer
FSU Communications Group
For many years before the Cold War ended, two scientists - one from Florida State University and the other from the Technical University of Budapest in Communist- dominated Hungary - were planning ways to help pull Eastern Europe out of its environmental morass.
Roy Herndon, the American, first met Peter Richter, the Hungarian, in 1974, after Richter was able to persuade the Communist government to let him come to FSU for a year to earn a master's degree in physics.
Herndon, at the time a visiting faculty member in the same subject, was struck by how much the two scientists had in common, including a love for environmental issues and a strong background in nuclear physics.
The two kept in touch after Richter returned to Hungary, through letters and telephone calls and occasional visits from Herndon. They knew that environmentalists would have their work cut out for them once the Cold War ended. And they were right.
For some years before it ended, it was clear to Herndon that one of the most significant legacies of the Cold War would be the enormous environmental degradation in Central and Eastern Europe caused by the decades of the military arms race and an almost complete lack of industrial-pollution control.
When the Iron Curtain was swept aside nearly 10 years ago, it revealed environmental destruction of an almost unimaginable magnitude in the countries that had been controlled by the Soviets.
Herndon and Richter realized that the first step in dealing with the environmental problems in the area was not only to identify the problems but also to find the people to solve the problems and bring them together to give them a chance to do it.
Since then, Herndon and FSU's Institute for Central and Eastern European Cooperative Environmental Research have led the effort to help undo the damage, an effort highlighted biennially by a worldwide symposium in one of the affected countries.
This year, the Fourth International Symposium and Exhibition on Environmental Contamination in Central and Eastern Europe is scheduled for Sept. 15-17 in Warsaw. Jerzy Buzek, prime minister of Poland, will make the opening remarks.
Previously hidden from public scrutiny, rivers in Central and Eastern Europe - still a primary source of drinking water for the local population - run befouled with waste from humans, livestock and industry.
Leftovers from the Cold War include radioactive and chemical contamination of the topsoil, toxic levels of heavy metals such as cadmium, zinc, lead and mercury, and decimated forests. The air is choked with the residue of the high-sulfur coal that feeds power plants, as well as emissions from cheap two-cycle automobiles.
Obviously, Western technologies and know-how can be put to the Eastern European countries' advantage. But it's not all a one-way street. Western countries benefit from the relationship as well, especially from the ready market for cleanup and control technologies of all kinds.
Herndon emphasizes that it is important to realize that the benefits of this work are indeed multilateral. Much of the environmental technology development has direct application to the cleanup of contaminated sites in the United States.
For example, a technology dealing with ion exchange absorbers, which was developed at the Czech Technical University in Prague, is now being tested for use in the cleanup of high-level radioactive waste generated in the United States during the arms race with the former Soviet Union.
And specialized phytoremediation techniques, which could prove useful in extracting metals from soils, are being developed through joint research by the FSU institute, its partner in southern Poland and the U.S. Department of Energy.
And it goes further than that, Herndon points out. The often severe environmental conditions provide a living laboratory for Western scientists.
"This is an opportunity that has been heretofore unprecedented in the Western world, to go into an area so heavily contaminated ... and look at the health effects, the environmental effects," Herndon said. "That's not something that can be overlooked scientifically."
There are other opportunities as well. Western environmental scientists, for example, can learn a great deal from their Eastern counterparts. Many of the scientists in the Communist bloc were working on environmental problems involving nuclear reactors at power plants and accidents that occurred decades ago. As a result, environmental scientists in these countries have a lot to offer Western scientists. In addition, Herndon said, the quality of their scientific training and education is excellent.
A final benefit, often overlooked, is "scientific stability," which results when scientists apply their expertise to environmental problems at home rather than weapons production in other countries.
Environmental experts, government officials, industrialists, students and scientists from more than 40 countries are expected at the conference. It will emphasize innovative and low-cost environmental technologies.
"Warsaw '98 will provide participants with an opportunity to interact directly with environmental scientists," said Herndon. "This symposium also will provide an excellent opportunity for environmental scientists to increase their knowledge of innovative environmental technologies ..."
Topics for the technical sessions include: methods of sampling and monitoring, site characterization, risk assessment and management, site remediation, field screening and remote sensing, modeling and computer applications, contaminated site treatment technologies and radiological and mixed waste contamination issues.
Interactions at previous symposia have helped establish long-term collaborations. The exhibition area also has been a favorite for technology vendors, developers, environmental consultants and others.
The symposium is sponsored and organized by FSU, the Technical University of Budapest, the U.S. Department of Energy, Environmental Protection Agency, the Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe and other international organizations. Previous symposia include Budapest '92, Budapest '94 and Warsaw '96.
More information about the symposium is available at http://www.warsaw98.fsu.edu.