“You didn't want to live in this chemical-polluted area for the rest of your life.” (B, interview, 21.06.2021)

It became clear that there was a general knowledge about the toxicity generated by the production at the Buna Werke, even though its full extend was unknown. So how did people in the GDR handle this knowledge? On the personal level of our interviewees and their surroundings, various ways of how to deal with the information became apparent. They told us that they themselves didn’t worry a lot about their health, more about the environmental damages, because they didn’t work in Buna on a daily basis. Furthermore they didn’t think too frequently about the surrounding toxicity - from today’s perspective, as they say, they are surprised about how little they worried about that. Growing up in the vicinity of the smoking chimneys, the dust and the smell was just too normal to them to be anything worth worrying about. On the other hand they didn’t want to live forever in this toxic environment. What they also experienced was the importance of chemical production for the economy and the prosperity of the country, but also personally for the workers. The Buna workers received a modern apartment in the chemical workers’ city Halle-Neustadt and good wages. This, according to our interviewees, might have helped to tolerate the environmental
and health issues. Many workers also were proud of working in Buna, having personally grown in and by the tough working conditions and having been able to stand their ground.

On the societal level, the interviewees all agreed that there was not enough opposition against the pollution from today’s point of view - which isn’t surprising, because resistance was hardly possible in the oppressive state. As far as they remember, most of the protests took place in the mid and late 1980s. Before, there were only small actions and groups. One interviewee remembers several smaller workers’ strikes, protesting against the working conditions. But these strikes were quickly stopped, sometimes by as little as giving the workers a small bonus payment or a symbolic appreciation by the authorities (interviewee C, interview, 21.06.2021). Starting at the end of the 1970s, there were also some environmental groups under the umbrella of the church, starting small protest actions, e.g. the distribution of printed matters, some environmental walks, banners. The interviewees were not sure whether any organisation or individual tried to (illegally) take measurements of toxicity in the environment. Part of the protest were also some attempts to make facts about health risks public, e.g. doctors stating that the disease numbers were over the average. Altogether these protests were on a low level, without a bigger importance (interviewee D, interview, 21.06.2021).

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