In its Spring 1997 research update, the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis detailed its work in the Katowice region of southwest Poland which, thanks to communist economic planning, is believed to be the place in Europe most heavily contaminated with heavy metal pollution. With enormous airborne concentrations of cadmium lead and sulfur dioxide, the area is so polluted that some experts believe it is unsafe to even eat food grown in the soil.
As the IIASA sums up the problems of the “Black Triangle” which includes parts of Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic in a zone of high pollution, “The Black Triangle and its 32 million inhabitants missed the shift to a post-industrial society experienced during the 1970s by comparable areas in the West. Until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the area lacked both an enlightened environmental policy and public awareness of postindustrial Western development. With the resultant increase in openness came revelation of the dramatic environmental degradation in the Black Triangle and its impact on health.”
Thanks to communist mismanagement, the IIASA believes it will take several decades for the Black Triangle to catch up to environmental quality levels which the rest of Europe enjoys.