{
  "$type": "site.standard.document",
  "bskyPostRef": {
    "cid": "bafyreieozo7oeoqiq2g2jmshm7p4ttmdmydo73uqlmk4adsqbhghc2j5im",
    "uri": "at://did:plc:av64nrsc7sczp26nmabnikse/app.bsky.feed.post/3mjlsvonzt2n2"
  },
  "coverImage": {
    "$type": "blob",
    "ref": {
      "$link": "bafkreiegnb7lnoacvvk5hn2pa4gdx4if624awvgoz2t7cduug5pe7qoccm"
    },
    "mimeType": "image/jpeg",
    "size": 111323
  },
  "path": "/english/69056-the-hidden-costs-of-air-pollution-in-kazakhstan.html",
  "publishedAt": "2026-04-16T05:55:00.000Z",
  "site": "https://vlast.kz",
  "tags": [
    "Vlast English"
  ],
  "textContent": "“There’s an unpleasant smell coming from the refinery in the evenings, especially when the wind blows,” a local resident of Shymkent, Kazakhstan’s third-largest city told Vlast in a 2023 reportage. In March, official data showed that Shymkent’s air is still among the most polluted in the country.\n\nFrom east to west, from north to south, air pollution is a chronic issue plaguing many cities in Kazakhstan. Globally, it is considered one of the leading causes of death: a 2021 analysis by the World Health Organization found that air pollution is responsible for at least 13 deaths per minute. Yet in Kazakhstan, it is usually dismissed by the country’s authorities as a problem related to car traffic.\n\nScientists have demonstrated that, in fact, the key cause of air pollution is the burning of fossil fuels to generate heating and electricity. Kazakhstan’s electricity generation depends on coal-fueled power plants, which burn some of the ‘dirtiest’ – or most polluting – coal in the world.\n\nAn Invisible Danger, With Visible Costs\n\nIn a piece written for the United Nations Development Programme, Nomundari Urantulga, a climate activist from Mongolia, said “I grew up knowing that the very first danger I ever faced was something invisible, something we had not ever chosen.”\n\nThat sentiment is relevant to Kazakhstan, too, and bears out when considering scientific findings from around the world. Air pollution – this invisible danger – has real consequences to public health: “it affects our social, environmental, and political life,” public health specialist Assel Mussabekova recently told Vlast in an interview.\n\nEconomically, air pollution’s consequences are often quantified in terms of impact on health and labor productivity. In the US, for example, a 2021 study found that the economic impact of premature deaths associated with fossil fuel-generated air pollution cost the health care system $820 million per year, though that figure itself “most likely vastly underestimate[d]” the total costs of these problems, the New York-based National Resource Defence Council said, due to limits in available health data.\n\nAir pollution in Beijing in 2014. Photo by Kentaro Iemoto (Wikimedia Commons).\n\nFrom a more macro socioeconomic lens however, a 2025 China-focused study found that “people’s consumption behavior [also] changes in response to air pollution.” The study, which examined a number of cities over an extended period of time, found that “a 1% increase in PM2.5 concentrations leads to a 0.65% decline in nighttime light brightness,” which “negatively affect[ed] the vitality of the nighttime economy.”\n\nAir pollution also bears human consequences. Research recently conducted in Europe, for example, showed that even small increases in particulate matter concentrations can reduce fertility.\n\nAs a joint study between the Hungarian ministry of finance and the University of Debrecen revealed, “an increase by 1 standard deviation would result in a 14.1% drop in birth rates next year and a 17.2% drop two years later.”\n\nThe adverse effects extend beyond physical health. Another 2025 study from China showed the direct consequences of air pollution in the mental health of middle-aged and older people. Its findings, the authors stressed, made clear “the importance of integrating mental health considerations into air pollution control measures,” including emission reductions and improved urban planning.\n\nTaken together, according to the 2025 State of Global Air report, around 7.9 million people die prematurely because of air pollution, with tens of millions more suffering adverse health effects. consequences on their health.\n\nCrucially, these human costs also translate back into further economic losses in the final tally. “Air pollution drains economies through high health expenses, loss of the workforce, school absences and environmental damage,” a UNDP report notes.\n\nThe Cost of Inaction in Kazakhstan\n\nTherefore, countries adopting a public health approach to air pollution should account for the cost of inaction, public health specialist Mussabekova argues.\n\n“Public health is all about prevention. So we need to ask: how much will it cost the government, if we don’t do anything about this? Air pollution is less visible than epidemics or virus outbreaks, so we tend to not prioritize it,” Mussabekova recently told Vlast in an interview.\n\nThe goal should be to translate the consequences of existing air pollution into current budget costs, rather than thinking about how expensive potential fixes would be.\n\n“Air pollution was shown to be a factor in many, many, many diseases. And it’s also a factor in postpartum depression, suicides, child abandonment, even in the number of divorces. We should get economists to calculate all of this burden in money terms just to see the scale of the problem,” Mussabekova said.\n\nAssel Mussabekova. Photo by Zhanara Karimova (archive).\n\nFor Kazakhstan’s most polluted cities, however, the bigger problem is the government’s unwillingness to accept data beyond its scarce and often inaccurate monitoring system.\n\n“We don’t lack data. The government just doesn't acknowledge that this data exists, and that is valid. And it doesn’t listen to the scientific community,” Mussabekova quipped.\n\nThe issue, according to Nassiba Baimatova, a professor of chemistry at Al-Farabi Kazakh National University in Almaty, lies specifically in the relationship between government agencies and the scientific community.\n\n“Kazhydromet [the public agency that monitors air – V.] says that all fossil fuel combustion-related pollutants (PAHs) come from car traffic. But our study shows that this is not the case,” Baimatova, who also heads the Environmental Analytical Chemistry Laboratory, told Vlast in an interview.\n\n“We know that PAHs come from the coal plants. Decision-makers definitely know about our scientific studies. We struggled a lot, trying to make ourselves heard,” Baimatova added.\n\nNassiba Baimatova. Photo by Daniyar Mussirov.\n\nKazhydromet disagrees. In a written response to our interview with Baimatova, the agency said that they “cooperate with civil society organizations, local authorities, and environmental activists to develop monitoring.”\n\nOver the years, the agency opened up to independent air quality monitor stations and included them in their measurements, until 2024, when independent sensors “were removed from the official map due to the lack of calibration certificates.”\n\nA public sign in Astana says: \"A clean city starts from you.\" Author's photo.\n\nUp in Smoke\n\nThe scientific community agrees that the use of fossil fuels, especially for central heating, is the key contributor to air pollution in Kazakhstan’s large cities, such as Almaty. Baimatova says that the issue of burning cheap, high-ash content coal should be addressed first.\n\n“Let’s look at what fuel we use for power plants and for cars. In both cases, it’s not appropriate. So let’s start with rethinking fuel sources and the places where we burn them,” Baimatova said.\n\nWIth public finances negatively affected by air pollution, the government should take the lead in tackling the issue. In addition, it has been demonstrated that for every dollar spent on curbing air pollution in the US “has resulted in around $30 of benefits.”\n\n“Public health specialists and economists could present these numbers so that the government agencies would understand,” Mussabekova said.\n\nDenis Vinnikov, a professor of internal medicine at Al-Farabi Kazakh National University in Almaty, told Vlast that air pollution should be considered an all-encompassing problem to be dealt with by everyone.\n\n“It’s not just politicians, not just the ministry of health, and certainly not the responsibility of individual, regular people. Air pollution involves society as a whole, from public health to public finances,” Vinnikov said.\n\nDenis Vinnikov. Archival photo.\n\nAn OECD report from 2016 said that 1.2 billion working days are lost every year to air pollution. This often cited study projects as many as 3.8 billion working days lost in 2060.\n\nThe paper concludes: “The potential economic consequences of both the market and non-market impacts of outdoor air pollution are very significant and underscore the need for strong policy action.”\n\nBut strong policy action, thus far, is lacking in Kazakhstan.\n\nIn September last year, Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said he agreed with the statement by US President Donald Trump that climate change is “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world” – a statement that represented a move away from previous pledges to achieve carbon neutrality in an effort to counterbalance the negative effects of climate change and pollution.\n\nLast week, during a meeting with his Uzbek counterpart in Bukhara, Tokayev seemed to change tack again when he said that his government is ready to support Shavkhat Mirziyoyev’s “Clean Air” initiative.\n\n“I share your concern about the environmental conditions in Tashkent. We are facing a very difficult situation here in Almaty. Unfortunately, Almaty has made the list of the world’s most polluted major cities, and urgent measures must be taken,” Tokayev told Mirziyoyev.\n\nGiven Central Asia’s big cities’ worsening air pollution levels, it remains to be seen whether the presidents’ initiative will also consider the rising costs associated with the clouds of smog that have become features of the cityscapes from Bishkek to Oskemen, from Tashkent to Atyrau.\n\n**Sign up for our English-language newsletter.**",
  "title": "The Hidden Costs of Air Pollution in Kazakhstan"
}