It is a really serious problem, especially for big cities or industrial areas like Moscow Oblast, like Leningrad, and industrial regions Sverdlosk, Irkutsk, and Dagestan. Of course, serious health problems also emerge because the drinking water is of quite poor quality. Even according to official statistics, about half of the population is consuming drinking water which does not meet standards. As I was saying, the major decline in water emissions was due to a decline in industrial production, but what was alarming was the household sector was at a stable level. So emissions from the household sector have not decreased.
Household consumption is also at a high level.
The problem is in the pricing, in the economic mechanisms of regulations because the prices are very low. For instance in Moscow, in my apartment, there are not any meters for the use of water. But now the situation is gradually changing and pricing mechanisms are being introduced and we hope that it will help to solve the problem. Regarding air pollution, the major problem is the pollution from the cars in the big cities. Today, Russians are buying a lot of second-hand cars from the West, many of them are bought in Japan and exported to the country.