USSR, Ministry of Health

In 1954, the Committee on the Study and Regulation of Pesticides was created under the USSR Ministry of Health s (Minzdrav) State Sanitary Inspection the Committee was mandated to direct research on pesticide use regimes. However, open information about this organization s activities is scanty. 

Georgian Antiplague Station Tbilisi, Georgia USSR Ministry of Health P3... 

The deliberate release into the environment of organisms containing r-DNA requires the authorization of the Central Regulatory Commission of the USSR Ministry of Health and/or USSR Gosagroprom and a resolution of the USSR Academy of Sciences Interdepartmental Commission on Recombinant DNA. ... 

PDKs have been defined for a whole range of products produced in microbiological factories. Table 5.6 for example shows the maximum permissible concentrations of microbially synthesised amino acids in the workplace, which were approved by the USSR Ministry of Health in 1985. These range from 2 to 10 mg/m of air. Clearly such guidelines have immense practical importance in Russia and the former Soviet republics which together, for example, produce around 34 000 tonnes, or 25% of total world output, of lysine. 

This state of affairs is perhaps not surprising when one considers that in one Soviet /t-paraffin-based SCP factory studies showed that some of the workforce were exposed to dense aerosols of up to 436 000 cells per m in their work place.This would appear to exceed the limits set by the USSR Ministry of Health by a factor of 400 (see section 5.3.2). The escape of such large quantities of micro-organisms into the work environment at this (unnamed) plant was ascribed to lack of containment in equipment, the flow of microbiological material through open chutes and the intake of contaminated air through the ventilation systems. 

The Methodical Instructions for Hygienic Evaluation of New Pesticides (USSR Ministry of Health 1988) specify that very persistent chemicals may not be registered or used for agriculture in the Soviet Union. Persistent pesticides, when they must be applied because of a lack of alternatives, are strictly regulated... 

All chemicals proposed for national use must receive state registration to be included in the list of pesticides permitted for use in the USSR. The lists, developed for a five-yr period, are nevertheless amended each year. Both domestic and imported pesticides that have received toxicological and ecological assessments are registered and added. The USSR Ministry of Health can also remove registered pesticides if adverse effects of use have been detected. 

Fig. 1. The scheme for toxicological studies of pesticide (USSR Ministry of Health, 1988).

This, however, is not a hard and fast rule. There is also a Zhumal Mikrobio-logii, Epidemiologii i Immunobiologii, published by the Ministry of Health, and a Vestnik Rentgenologu i Radiologii, published by the same ministry. The Moscow and Leningrad universities publish a Vestnik each, while the USSR Academy publishes such specific titles as Mikrobiologiya and Biokhimiya. 

The order N720 of the Ministry of Health of the USSR from 31.07.1978, Appendix Nl. 

Later, the Georgian AP Station became an integral part of the centralized AP system, controlled by the Main Department of Quarantinous Diseases of the Ministry of Health of the USSR. The AP system had a very well-defined hierarchy and the supervisor for the Georgian AP Station was the Stavropol AP Institute. All new isolates of especially dangerous pathogens (if any) had to be sent to Stavropol for confirmation, after which the isolates were to be destroyed. 

In a very formal manner the Government attempted to establish a Commission on the Use of Pesticides under the Ministry of Agriculture of Lithuania, unfcntunately according to the scheme that had been functioning in all other Soviet Republics of the former USSR. Some of the experts from the Ministry of Health were invited. This Commission could not work effectively because there was too little participation from its members they were not paid and there was too much work for the experts in addition to their principal occupation. Convosely, absolute shortage of reliable data on the environmental health impact and related information made it impossible to ensure a rational decision making process. 

Existing management is still based on the former USSR model where several ministries and agencies took responsibilities for the control of the use of pesticides eg. Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Health, Plant Protection Station, Department on Environment Protection. However, no intersectoral management body has been established. 

Chief, Department of General Toxicology and Experimental Pathology, All-Union Scientific Research Institute of Hygiene and Tbxicology of Pesticides, Polymers and Plastics, Ministry of Health, Kiev, USSR. 252127... 

The State Sanitary Inspectorate of the USSR under the Ministry of Public Health which supervises compliance with rules and standards of radiation safety in design, construction, and operation of nuclear power plants. 

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