The regime was afraid that the truth about pollutants in the air would reach the people
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Jan Leníček was born on 11 April 1945 in Havlíčkův Brod into a family of a teacher and a lawyer as the middle of three children. His parents met during the war in an amateur theatre. Neither of his parents was a member of the Communist Party. After primary school he was not recommended to study at a grammar school. Only because his mother harshly talked with comrades at the district committee was he able to study. For further studies he chose the chemistry college in Pardubice, where his father’s friend was the vice-rector. He finished his studies with the degree of chemical engineer in 1968. He then worked briefly at Spolchemie in Ústí nad Labem. Just after the August occupation of Czechoslovakia, he received a draft order and completed a year of military service in Varnsdorf, North Bohemia. After the war he returned to the laboratories of the Ústí chemistry plant for six years. In 1976 he started working as the head of the organic chemistry laboratory at the Regional Hygiene Station in Ústí nad Labem. Beyond his normal duties, he and his colleagues began to work on research and measurements of various harmful substances in the environment and on the development of measuring instruments. The organic chemistry laboratory of the Ústí “hygiene” was pioneering under his leadership, thanks to its often innovative methods, and cooperated with many of the top workplaces in Czechoslovakia. Since 1991, he has been involved in the international research programme “Teplice”, which for the first time in the history of Czechoslovakia intensively monitored air pollution. He has written dozens of scientific papers on the measurement of chemical substances in various environments. In 2024, the witness lived in Ústí nad Labem.
