Air Quality in the Small Town of Ridder Worse Than in Some Regional Centers of Kazakhstan

The small town of Ridder, with a population of around 50,000 people, has promising polymetallic ore deposits. However, the city-forming enterprises engaged in ore processing and enrichment cause significant environmental damage. In 4 out of the last 10 years, the city recorded a “high” level of air pollution, and over the past two years, more than 9,200 cases of exceeding the maximum permissible concentrations of harmful substances have been registered.

Ridder has a sharply continental climate, characterized by a cold and long winter, moderately cool summer, and large annual and daily temperature fluctuations.

The city is a center of mining and metallurgical industry (zinc, lead, precious metals). The surrounding areas contain deposits of polymetallic ores (mainly lead-zinc ores with gold, silver, cadmium, antimony, arsenic, tin, iron, sulfur, and other elements), as well as raw materials for construction materials production (clay, sand-gravel mixtures, and sand). The area is rich in water and forest resources.

The city-forming enterprise is the Ridder Mining and Processing Complex LLP “KazZinc”, which includes three mines, lead and zinc plants, a processing plant, and a repair and mechanical plant. The city’s energy supply is provided by the Ridder CHP and the Leninogorsk cascade of hydroelectric power plants. 

Air quality monitoring in Ridder is conducted at 3 automatic monitoring stations, recording data every 20 minutes for 11 indicators: 1) sulfur dioxide; 2) carbon monoxide; 3) nitrogen dioxide; 4) nitric oxide; 5) hydrogen sulfide; 6) ozone; 7) cadmium; 8) copper; 9) lead; 10) beryllium; 11) zinc.

Two indices are used to assess air quality: 

- Atmospheric Pollution Index (API) – an indicator that accounts for the concentrations of several key pollutants and their impact on human health. It uses average daily or annual concentrations to determine the level of chronic air pollution;

- Standard Index (SI) – an indicator calculated by dividing the highest single measured concentration of a pollutant by its maximum permissible concentration. It helps identify the most significant pollutant at a specific station or city and is used to assess short-term air contamination.

According to Kazhydromet, the API in Ridder was rated as “high” (7.4) in 2015, remained “elevated” (5.0-6.0) during 2016-2018 and in 2020, and was “low” in 2019 and 2021. The SI in 2022-2024 indicated a high level of pollution. 

In 2023, monitoring stations recorded 3,715 cases of exceeding maximum permissible concentrations, and in 2024 – 5,558 cases. The majority of pollutants were sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, and hydrogen sulfide. 

As previously reported, the Regional Ecological Summit is scheduled to be held in Astana from April 22 to 24, 2026, where the environmental challenges of the Central Asian countries and possible solutions will be discussed.