Information

Copşa Mică (German: Kleinkopisch, Hungarian: Kiskapus) is a town in Sibiu County, Transylvania, Romania, located north of Sibiu, 33 km east of Blaj, and 12 km southwest of Mediaş. According to the town's website, its population in 2000 was 5189, down 23% from its population in 1989, the year communism collapsed in Romania.

The town is best known for its status (in the 1990s) as one of the most polluted in Europe. This was due to the emissions of two factories in the area:

• One, open from 1936 to 1993, produced carbon black for dyes; its emissions permeated the area for nearly sixty years, leaving soot on homes, trees, animals, and everything else in the area. The stain from these decades of deposits are still visible.
• The other source of the pollution, less visible but with even more serious effects to the health of the town's residents, was Sometra, a smelter whose emissions has contributed to significant higher incidents of lung disease, impotence, and a life expectancy nine years below Romania's average.

External links and sources

• Town's official website (in Romanian)
• Tourist guide to the town, with background on its polluted history
• Sometra SA, one of the factories responsible for Copşa Mică pollution
• 1999 article about a visit to Copşa Mică in Salon.com
• Information from 1999 on the watershed of the Târnava Mare River
• 1993 project funded by UNIDO to assist in the establishment of cleaner production practices at Sometra
• Satellite photos of Copşa Mică in 1986 and 2004
• fragilecologies.com: The People and Pollution of Copsa Mica, Romania