Surrounded by residential buildings and trade centers, an abandoned factory in Ukraine’s capital city contains 200 tons of mercury that is slowly evaporating and spreading through the city.
Many people in the area have no idea.
“No, I haven’t heard,” said Artur Belskyi, who has lived less than a mile from the factory for the past 14 years, when asked if he had heard about the mercury at the old JSC Radical factory. The factory operated from 1952–1996. It was built just outside of the city after World War II, but Kyiv has expanded and enveloped the factory since then.
The municipal government had plans to clean it up, as it is a harmful substance, but scrapped the plan due to budget shortfalls for 2013.
