I vividly remember that world-upending moment in a chemistry class at school when it was revealed that the sense of smell is based on molecules of the smelly substance coming into physical contact with the olfactory organ. In light of this knowledge, an innocent fart became a bunch of faecal matter floating toward your face, and the smell of petrol became a toxic cloud. The air had suddenly taken on a form, and everyday smells became significantly less bearable than before. Olfaction is sensitive, programmed to send signals of dangers found in the air—of something unusual and potentially harmful coming too close to us. This is also why a sudden olfactory disturbance makes you flee the room—think of, say, a stench on a public bus. But what if there is nowhere to run, for the stinky thing is the very ambient air that surrounds and permeates us?

What power does stench have? And who gets to feel the stench? Who talks about the stench? Who gets to decide where it stinks?

We experience the objective, local, and material dimension of polluted air (i.e., particles in the air) as a stench. In what follows, however, I will attempt to briefly outline also the economic, political, environmental and social justice dimensions of air pollution. For this purpose, I will look at the (literally and figuratively) stinky transactions taking place in Põhja-Tallinn and also spreading beyond. These transactions are systemically generating political, material, and social distance between those whose lifestyles and life arrangements stand to benefit from industrial capitalism and the communities and areas that suffer because of it. Hence the main question of this article: what power does stench have? And who gets to feel the stench? Who talks about the stench? Who gets to decide where it stinks?

Paljassaare stinks

For almost ten years, Keiti Kljavin and I have been running a studio on urbanisation for the urban studies master’s programme at the Estonian Academy of Arts. Its primary purpose is to expand students’ understanding of the city as a locus of social relations and train them to see urbanisation as a complex of trans-local and socioecological processes. A city is not limited to what takes place before our eyes and on the spot but also encompasses the relations and processes that create it and reach much further. For the past four years, our studio has focused on the Paljassaare peninsula in Põhja-Tallinn, because there, the processes that characterise the internal logic of a post-socialist and neoliberal city stand out in sharp relief.¹

As a former seabed and then a closed border zone, Paljassaare differs from the rest of the Põhja-Tallinn district for having been a sparsely populated hinterland of the city already in the Soviet period. The peninsula is dominated by a wastewater treatment plant built in the 1970s. But it also brings together other services necessary for the city and difficult to fit anywhere else—waste management, food industry, heavy industry, delivery services, social services as well as urban rurality in the form of Paljassaare Special Conservation Area. Furthermore, at the beginning of the peninsula, Utilitas is due in 2026 to open a green, zero-emission heat pump plant that utilises wastewater and seawater. There are few residents on the peninsula—it has only one residential neighbourhood and many of the 600 people registered there are clients of social housing units.

Between the peripheral functions, there is a stretch of wasteland that signals something else—speculative land ownership that is anticipating a surge in land value. Indeed, it has been said for decades that there is a lot of potential here, and the planning registry is full of projects for less and more grandiose versions of an ideal seaside city (including Ecobay, so-called casino islands, Hundipea etc.). But implementing such projects does not go as fast and smooth as elsewhere in Põhja-Tallinn—even though Paljassaare has great appeal to many, surely few would be willing to spend a lot of money on real estate surrounded by garbage dumps, heavy industry, and wasteland. And besides, it stinks here!

Indeed, the olfactory landscapes of the peninsula vary according to the particular petrol products currently being delivered to the port, the particular product currently being fried in the Viciūnai Group production facility, the freshness of the sludge on the concrete fields of Tallinna Vesi wastewater plant, and the direction of wind. You never know what aroma you will meet where, but it is clear that for the local population, who are ageing, lowest earning in Tallinn, and largely Russian-speaking people², and who have resided in the area for decades, this bouquet of smells has always been the everyday reality.

´Põhja-Tallinn stinks´

Põhja-Tallinn as a whole is currently the fastest-growing residential and business district in the city, and in addition to the already gentrified Kalamaja, the wealthier population is also increasingly making its way to Kopli. The northern part of the peninsula, however, is for now still in the transitional phase of the gentrification process with its characteristic heterogeneity—the ports and factories are operational, long-term residents are still in place and still happy, but major developments and smaller projects are being planned and completed that should bring in almost as many new residents to the district over the coming decades as there are currently living there.

Everything falls within the norm, but the air still stinks—is this really something that one must just get used to?

Property owners new to the district might not be acquainted with the everyday reality of Põhja-Tallinn’s industry-adjacent residential areas before moving in, as promotional photos and renderings do not show the organic matter floating in the air. Thus, many new homeowners feel they have been cheated—they have paid a lot of money for a home in a seafront district, where clean air should be part of the package, but what they are getting instead is watery eyes, nausea, and headaches from the occasionally fossil fuel-smelling ambient air.³

Accordingly, the number of dissatisfied residents in Põhja-Tallinn, all the way from Kopli Lines to the Noblessner area, has begun to grow3 and they have formed an advocacy group on Facebook called ‘Põhja-Tallinn haiseb’ [‘Põhja-Tallinn stinks’]. There, they promptly report the location and character of any odour disturbances to collect and archive evidence about the problem. The purpose is to keep the topic alive in the community and feed the collective outrage—a good driving force for pursuing one’s rights. The community has turned to the district government and the Environmental Board for help, who have then organised meetings and carried out additional measurements, but their resulting answer—the air is good, no indicators exceed the limits, nothing poses a threat to health—has not placated anyone. Everything falls within the norm, but the air still stinks—is this really something that must just get used to?

Normal stench

While planning for this article, I have been checking the Estonian air monitoring website every day.⁴ Apart from the overall ‘satisfactory’ levels (yellow in the traffic light model) registered by the Viru Keemia Grupp’s monitoring station to the east of the 16,000-inhabitant Järve district of Kohtla-Järve (and open to prevailing westerly winds), the website does not show any problems with air pollution anywhere else in the country. All the other stations show green—after all, Estonia is among those with the cleanest ambient air in the world. And yet, regardless of whether air pollution is said to be a problem or not, levels of pollution that fall within the normal range can still cause severe momentary odour disturbances, reduced quality of life, or, in the worst cases, chronic health damage or death.

But let us return to school. It is the morning of the first day of the annual autumn tour of Estonia for first-year urban studies students. After a two-hour bus ride, it is time for the first stop of the trip. We put on our coats and set ourselves ready—the first task is to conquer one of the higher points in Estonia, the semi-coke hill in Kiviõli Adventure Centre. Nice for waking ourselves up and a great immersive kick-off to our trip, which aims to introduce students to other ways of being found beyond the Golden Circle of Tallinn.

We start climbing. The hill is steep, the physical exertion makes you gasp for air, but… it is as if there is nothing to gasp for. It feels as if air has been replaced by an oily and thick substance that gets stuck in your throat, stings your eyes, and makes your brain hurt. Here, we have indeed reached a different everyday Estonian reality, where ambient air, the environment for our biological body, is wholly unlike what we are used to in, say, the capital. From the top of the semi-coke hill, one can see the production facilities of Kiviõli Chemical Industry, thick dark smoke billowing from its chimneys, and further away its mining areas, other semi-coke and ash hills, and the town of Kiviõli, which is itself inextricably tied to the industry.

On the air monitoring website, the quality of this oily air in Kiviõli that morning was marked green, i.e., ’good’—everything was within the norm. It fell short of ‘very good’ due to slightly higher sulfur dioxide (SO2) content. Sulfur dioxide is a colourless gas that is heavier than air and one of the most common causes of air pollution as well as the main culprit in the acidification of the environment. The same website informs you that inhaling even a small amount of this unbearably smelling gas causes bronchial constriction and increased mucus secretion. Long-term exposure reduces lung function and damages the respiratory tract.⁴ Yet, note that the maximum contamination level marked green or normal on the website (approximately 4.3 ppm) is almost 150 times higher than the sulfur dioxide concentration considered safe for humans (0.03 ppm); furthermore, asthmatics find it difficult to breathe already with a sulfur dioxide content as low as 0.1 ppm.⁵

Ida-Viru County has a lot of asthmatics, though, and overall, respiratory diseases are more common there than in other regions. The region also has the lowest life expectancy in Estonia.⁶ But could it be that this is nothing but a statistical indicator for the local residents immersed in their daily routines? Advocacy pages such as ‘Kiviõli stinks’ or ‘Kohtla-Järve stinks’, where the local community would rebuke the polluter, are nowhere to be found. Why are the people not complaining? Have they become accustomed or adapted to the stench? The sense of smell is discerning but habituates quickly in case of a lasting irritant. Or should we rather ask, what determines the range of people who can and may call out poor air quality as a problem?

Sociologist Javier Auyero and anthropologist Débora Swistun, who studied the relationship of the Flammable slum residents in Buenos Aires with their toxic living environment, conclude that ‘[b]etween the (contaminated) environment and the subjective experiences of it we find cognitive frames that, deeply influenced by history and by discursive and practical interventions, shape toxic knowledge (or lack thereof )’.⁷ The experience and acknowledgement of contamination hence cannot be considered as something objective (i.e., whether the stench signals the person of hazardous air or not), but even that personal bodily experience itself is socially produced, and the physical tolerance limit has shifted over time according to what is on the other side of the scale—and whether there is anything there at all.

The game of bag filters

Currently, one of the largest employers in Ida-Viru County—Heiti Hääl’s AVG Grupp-owned Kiviõli Chemical Industry, henceforth KCI—is facing closure. The EU’s Medium Combustion Plants Directive, adopted in 2015, requires plants to reduce their sulfur dioxide emissions, and in order to comply and continue production, KCI would have to equip their chimneys with a 20–40 million euro sulfur capturing device by the end of this year.⁸

Naturally, KCI has vowed to challenge the Environmental Board’s requirements in court, as installing the filter would mean a large investment and the process would take at least four years. In four years, however, the kukersite⁹ reserves in KCI’s mines will run out, and the Environmental Board has not granted the company a new mining permit. KCI has put forth two possible scenarios to the Environmental Board—either embark on a long legal process, in the course of which KCI’s oil shale reserve might run out, and the problem with pollution would not be solved anytime soon, or allow the company to expand its deposits and continue ‘enhancing’ oil shale into shale oil until at least 2035. In the latter case, the investment in the filter would pay off, and there would still be 650 jobs and the residual heat from the production process, which can be used to heat the town’s housing stock cheaply. The Environmental Board has plenty to consider and it is hoped that there will be a compromise found that will satisfy all parties.¹⁰

The owners do not plan to terminate the contracts with the stench-generating companies before they can start their construction.

The rear end of Hundipea—whose voices count?


By now, the huge profits of the carbon-intensive energy sector are already looking precarious, and it makes sense to invest them in the most reliable financial guarantee of all—real estate in the capital. The regeneration of Paljassaare may likewise soon gain momentum, for a planning application for turning the port area into a wholly unique seafront neighbourhood called Hundipea is well underway. One of the major investors in the development is KCI’s owner and ‘petrol salesman’ Heiti Hääl, while the ideologue and passionate promoter of this new urban ideal is his son Markus Hääl. Hundipea aims to solve all the bottlenecks of modern cities and avoid the fragmented urban space created by plot-based urban development. It is the largest development with a comprehensive idea and planning since Soviet-era residential districts—an ideal, green, socially cohesive city with everything required for a good life, created seemingly from scratch. Large investors and the experts who have joined hands with them are working on the neighbourhood with a passion, planning new homes for themselves, their friends, and everyone else who would like to live in a modern, dense, highly liveable, and climate-resilient seaside district—the future centre of Tallinn.

But Põhja-Tallinn stinks! Well, this is fine, for many of the odour disturbances that current Põhja-Tallinners find problematic originate from the heavy industry and transport, processing, and storage of fossil fuels taking place on the land of the Hundipea development. The owners do not plan to terminate the contracts with the stench-generating companies before they can start their construction. In other words, the sooner the city of Tallinn confirms the Hundipea planning and grants a building permit, the sooner they will get rid of the bothersome demands for clean air by the vocal residents of Põhja-Tallinn’s new developments.

But… Paljassaare also stinks, no!? Even if Hundipea is built and the oil products and other stinky substances are moved elsewhere (probably to the backyard of someone less vocal), other functions of the capital’s hinterland will remain on the peninsula, such as the sludge fields of Tallinna Vesi, from which organic matter would be carried to future Hundipea by prevailing westerly winds, and the new zero-emission heat pump station, which is feared to cause algae blooms in the waters around the peninsula and make them stink of sulfur dioxide all year round.¹¹ 

Will the advocacy group ‘Põhja-Tallinn stinks’ get tens of thousands of new active members from future Hundipea residents? Or should we believe that the developers and future residents are already certain to have enough social and other capital to pressure the city into dropping the plans for such a green energy plant in this particular location, and perhaps also tone down other stinky hinterland functions in Paljassaare or even move them altogether elsewhere? But where? Who gets to decide whose home will stink in the future?

This essay contains bits and pieces of the collective research by the Estonian Academy of Arts’ urban studies master students, Keiti Kljavin, and the author, carried out in Paljassaare and elsewhere.

ANDRA AALOE is an urbanist, who works at the Estonian Academy of Arts.

HEADER photo by Egemen Mercanlioglu
PUBLISHED: MAJA 4-2024 (118) with main topic AIR

1  See the summaries of previous studio projects—‘Paljassaare kaleidoscope’ (2023); ‘Paljassaare through time capsules’ (2021); ‘Insula Nudus: Paljassaare beyond interesting’ (2020)—on the projects’ page of the urban studies programme: https://www.artun.ee/en/curricula/urban-studies/projects/
2  Statistics Estonia, ‘Tallinna rikkamad ja vaesemad asumid’ [‘Richer and poorer subdistricts in Tallinn’], 17 June 2019 / Tallinna rikkamad ja vaesemad asumid
3  Merilin Pärli, ‘Ametitel pole kiireid lahendusi Põhja-Tallinnas aastaid levinud haisu vastu’ [‘No quick solutions to the Põhja-Tallinn „stink“’], ERR, 2 August 2024 / Ametitel pole kiireid lahendusi Põhja-Tallinnas aastaid levinud haisu vastu
4  www.õhuseire.ee
5  Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, ‘Medical Management Guidelines for Sulfur Dioxide’, https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/
6  Hans Orru, ‘Ida-Virumaa – keskkond ja elanike tervis’ [‘Ida-Viru County—Environment and Population Health’], ERR, 19 June 2019 / Ida-Virumaa – keskkond ja elanike tervis
7  Débora Alejandra Swistun and Javier Auyero, Flammable: Environmental Suffering in an Argentine Shantytown (Oxford University Press, 2009).
8  Toomas Kelt, ‘Kiviõli Keemiatööstust ähvardab sulgemine’ [‘Kiviõli Chemical Industry under threat of closure’], Äripäev, 17 December 2023 / Kiviõli Keemiatööstust ähvardab sulgemine
9  Type of oil shale—Ed.
10  Nikolai Andrejev, ‘Eesti väikelinnas on ohus 650 töökohta. „Tuleb pikk kohtuasi“’ [‘650 jobs at risk in a small Estonian town. „There will be a lengthy court case“’], Äripäev, 17 April 2024 / Eesti väikelinnas on ohus 650 töökohta. „Tuleb pikk kohtuasi“
11  Margitta Otsmaa and Janek Salme, ‘Tallinn: Utilitase plaanitav soojuspumbajaam tooks randa vetika- ja haisuprobleemi’ [‘Tallinn: Utilitas’ planned seawater heat pump spells algae and odor problems’], ERR, 24 October 2024 / Tallinn: Utilitase plaanitav soojuspumbajaam tooks randa vetika- ja haisuprobleemi´