The State - News from Dec. 1, 1988

About 12 million Poles live in areas devastated by pollution, according to a report by Poland’s Academy of Sciences, which urged tighter government regulation to clean up what one scientist called Europe’s “dirtiest country.” The published report was the result of this week’s meeting of the academy’s governing presidium in Warsaw. Most beaches on the Baltic Sea have been closed, industrial waste output increased by nearly half in the last five years and most Polish rivers lack drinkable water, according to the report by the academy, the nation’s top research institution. Poland ranks second in Europe in sulfur dioxide emissions, the report added.