A perspective on environmental health in the USSR: research and practice.

Under the auspices of the US-USSR agreement for cooperative research in environmental health, Soviet methods for setting and enforcing standards for environmental pollutants were observed. Since all industry is government owned, the Soviet government is the principal polluter of the environment, the regulator of environmental degradation, and supporter of research on environmental quality control. The Sanitary Epidemiological Service, a subdivision of the Ministry of Health, coordinates the activities of many of the research institutes involved in environmental research as well as a large network of Sanepid Stations for maintaining and controlling environmental quality at the local level. The Soviet Union's distinctive view of a pollutant standard has greatly influenced the environmental research that is undertaken. The centralized absolute power of the government to enforce pollution abatement has led to some improvements in environmental quality.