Harmful chemicals pouring from the taps, smog filling the sky: Rospotrebnadzor names Russia's regions with the worst environmental conditions.
More than half of Russia's population—83,8 million people—currently live in conditions where chemical pollution exceeds safe health levels. According to a recent report from Rospotrebnadzor for 2025, this is a record negative figure in recent years: since 2016, the number of people suffering from harmful chemicals has been steadily declining, but now the situation has dramatically reversed. The main triggers for environmental degradation are contaminated drinking water and smog in industrial centers.
Chemicals and Germs: Where Is Tap Water Dangerous?
Laboratory tests conducted by Rospotrebnadzor (the Federal Service for Surveillance on Consumer Rights Protection and Human Wellbeing) have revealed that tap drinking water in many regions of the Russian Federation categorically fails to meet sanitary standards. In terms of hazardous chemical contamination—when excess levels of iron, sodium, lithium, or chloroform are detected in water—the Tomsk Region is the worst affected. In this Siberian region, agency experts rejected more than half of all samples (55%). Following Tomsk Region on the list of territories with the most toxic water are the Republic of Kalmykia (48%), Novgorod (41%), and Kurgan (38%) regions.
At the same time, the agency assessed the microbial contamination of water sources. The Jewish Autonomous Region (JAR) led the country in terms of the proportion of hazardous microbes in water, with nearly one in five samples (22%) found to be unhealthy. Serious problems with the bacteriological safety of water were also recorded in Dagestan, Tyva, and Khabarovsk Krai—in each of these regions, the proportion of samples contaminated with microbes reached 15%.
Smog over Siberia and ten regions with perfectly clean air
In the area of air quality monitoring, Rospotrebnadzor reported a formal reduction in the proportion of contaminated samples across Russia to 0,64%. However, the country's environmental landscape is clearly divided into two extremes. The agency identified ten regions with perfectly clean air, where not a single violation was found during the entire year of inspections. This "white list" includes Belgorod, Leningrad, Arkhangelsk, Amur, and Tver Oblasts, Chechnya, Ingushetia, Karachay-Cherkessia, the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug - Yugra, and Chukotka.
At the opposite extreme are industrial areas, where local residents regularly breathe thick smog and carcinogenic emissions. The Urals, Siberia, and the Far East traditionally exhibit the worst indicators. Khakassia, the Altai Krai, and the Krasnoyarsk Krai have the highest proportion of polluted air and exceedances of maximum permissible concentrations (MPCs) of harmful substances in the country.
The real causes of the crisis: defense plants instead of civilian cars
Rospotrebnadzor itself, in its official document, attributes the recorded increase in chemical pollution to the abstract "development of industry and the increase in the number of automobiles." However, economic statistics point to other factors.
According to the Center for Macroeconomic Analysis, production in most civilian sectors of Russian industry declined in 2025. At the same time, production of finished metal products, electronics, and optics, as well as shipbuilding and aircraft manufacturing, increased sharply. This means that officials' vague statements about "growth in mechanical engineering" likely conceal a dramatically increased environmental impact from military-industrial complex (MIC) facilities operating three shifts.
