A picture taken on Feb 19, 2019 shows a view of a snowy yard covered with a layer of coal dust in the town of Kiselyovsk in the highly industrial Kemerovo region, more than 3,000km east of Moscow. — AFP: Black snow falling in Siberia due to air loaded with coal dust prompted the regional governor on Tuesday to temporarily close a coal processing plant he accused of killing residents.
“It depresses you when everything around you is black. And you understand it’s extremely harmful for your health,“ said Natalya Zubkova, 42, editor of an online newspaper in one of the affected cities, Kiselyovsk. Prosecutors focused blame on the Cherkasovskaya coal processing plant in Kiselyovsk where they said they found “long-term, systematic” violations of air pollution limits, adding that this causes lung disease.