Protection Zone

Protection Zone has the purpose of protecting a populated place (part of it) or a separate building from sanitary hazards that could adversely affect the health of those living in them or could worsen their sanitary condition. Protection zones are established for protection: 1) populated places: resorts, dacha settlements; 2) parts of populated places: residential district, hospital or sanatorium district, educational district; 3) buildings of a preventive and curative nature, for example, rest homes, sanatoriums, nursing homes for convalescents, infectious disease hospitals, psychiatric colonies, etc., children's nurseries, kindergartens, schools, etc., physical culture institutions; 4) facilities for water supply, for the use of mineral springs, mineral muds, ventilation devices for drawing in clean air; 5) beach and bathing facilities, parks of culture and rest, protected forests and groves, children's and physical culture grounds. The sizes of territories allocated for protection zones vary (from 25-50 m to 2-10 km and more in radius) depending on the nature of sanitary hazards, their intensity and meteorological factors (movement of air, direction, speed and force of wind, humidity, precipitation, temperature, climate), terrain relief and other local conditions that could intensify or weaken these hazards. When establishing the size of protection zones, appropriate technical devices and improvements that could reduce or neutralize these hazards are of great importance. Territories allocated for protection zones are considered prohibited for construction and settlement, and they are planted with greenery. Thanks to the latter, the value of protection zones can be enhanced, but the duration of action of greenery is relatively short: from the appearance of leaves on trees to half their normal size, until the leaves fall off by half. The effect of green protection zones depends, in addition to the above conditions, also on the type of planting, plant species, density and height. The hazards requiring the establishment of protection zones can be divided into several main groups: 1) release of gases or vapors into the air, 2) release of smoke, soot and dust into the air, 3) contamination of soil with waste and decomposing substances, 4) disruption of soil cover integrity and soil waterlogging, 5) water pollution with runoff, 6) possible contamination dangerous to people and animals of water, soil and air, 7) vibration, noise and other sharp auditory irritations, 8) bright visual and other sharp visual irritation, 9) intensified railway, automobile, horse-drawn and other traffic, 10) danger of explosion and fires, 11) cold, damp or hot and drying winds, 12) drifting with sand, snow, erosion and flooding. The sources of formation and release of the above hazards from which protection zones are established can be: 1) factories, plants and other industrial enterprises; 2) food enterprises: slaughterhouses, intestinal production, glue-making, tallow-rendering and others, sugar refineries, potato-processing plants and others, mills, cheese-making, butter-making plants, sausage production, canning, fish-smoking and etc.; 3) communal facilities: cesspits, drainage points and stations, sewage treatment facilities-settling tanks, sludge beds, biological filters, irrigation fields, sewage farms, dumps, incinerators and stations, animal cemeteries, scrap yards, utilization plants; 4) transport facilities: carriage yards, garages, railway tracks and stations, warehouses, ports, aerodromes...

The establishment of protection zones requires preliminary study and investigation of the hazards threatening the population or any institution, and the size of protection zones is determined in each individual case individually. Special instructions and rules for protection zones have been issued in the USSR for zones of sanitary protection of water sources, mineral springs, medical institutions (see Sanitary Protection Zones) and industrial enterprises. According to sanitary rules for the selection of sites for industrial construction, issued by the People's Commissariat of Health, People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs and the Supreme Council of National Economy of the RSFSR on April 23, 1930, all industrial enterprises, according to the type of production and the nature of hazards they present to the surrounding area, are divided into 3 classes: Class A-industrial enterprises whose construction is permitted outside the boundaries of populated places-have a protection zone of at least 2 km; Class B-enterprises whose construction is permitted within the boundaries of populated places in special industrial districts-have a protection zone of at least 250 m; Class C-enterprises whose construction may be permitted under certain conditions in residential and other districts-have a protection zone of at least 50 m. The establishment of protection zones has important sanitary significance in the planning, replanning and construction of populated places.