[8][9] Speranskaya has led many campaigns against the use of organic pollutants, fought to ban the burial and transport of hazardous chemicals, and provided information to government decision-makers for policy changes in many different countries.
[10] When the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, thousands of tons of obsolete chemicals and pesticides such as DDT, which had been banned in the West, were left behind, scattered throughout Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia.
[1] Compounding the problem is the fact that the stockpiles have been left in poor agricultural communities where farmers gather the chemicals to use on their crops and gardens, and in some parts of Asia, they are used to make fruit stay fresh longer, sold in open markets by women and children, and stored together with food products.
Speranskaya pressured Moscow for years through her work at the Eco-Accord Center, an independent[13] environmental watchdog, demanding it secure the stockpiles of chemicals and clean up the enormous mess left by the Soviets.
"[1] Her activities were influential in the ratification of the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants by at least 128 countries, and a majority of former Soviet states; it was signed by then-president Vladimir Putin at the time, but the Russian Federation has yet to ratify it.