An elusive stench: residents of different areas of St. Petersburg periodically complain of an unpleasant odor. What could be the reason?

Why are there more questions than answers?

News about the unpleasant odor appears relatively regularly in the St. Petersburg media. In October 2022, citizens reported a stench in the Moskovsky and Frunzensky districts. In July 2023, similar news came from Krasnoselsky and Pushkinsky districts. Often residents never learn anything about the reasons.

As Alexander Knyazhsky, administrator of the group “Unpleasant Odor in the Kirovsky District of St. Petersburg,” explains in an interview with Sobaka.ru, today only harmful emissions are regulated in the city. “Those substances that only cause an unpleasant odor are not regulated in any way, so there are no official violations,” he states.

The editors of the Environmental Management Committee confirmed that currently the laws “do not provide criteria for assessing the presence of odors.” “In most cases, the smell is formed not by a single substance, but by a complex mixture of substances. In addition, odorous compounds in the general mixture, for which the MPC standard has been established, are often present in the atmospheric air in such small quantities that when monitoring the quality of atmospheric air, exceeding the MPC, despite the presence of a distinct odor, is usually not observed,” they explain in the committee.

However, as Igor Agafonov from the coordination council for environmental well-being at the Public Chamber emphasizes, the problem is broader. The point is not only that modern regulations do not provide for liability for emissions of substances with an unpleasant odor. According to him, in St. Petersburg, in general, there is no established system for informing residents about air pollution.

“It is necessary to provide information to residents about pollutants so that residents can receive it in some form,” he said. — So that everyone knows who the main polluters are in their area [воздуха], what emissions it generates. Can any of the residents get this information? No! We can’t get it in principle. I have been doing this for many years, I was an expert in the Legislative Assembly, I was on the public council of the Ministry of Natural Resources, it is impossible to obtain reliable information about what exactly is happening with the atmospheric air at the moment.”