Uranium story in Sydney Morning Herald

[Aaron Oakley <aoakley@receptor.pharm.uwa.edu.au>]

Greetings, RADSAFErs,

Any thoughts on the following.....?

Saturday, December 11, 1999
Sydney Morning Herald Online



Deformity and death in villages of the damned


Born with only one eye and a deformed head, seven-year-old Gandhar
Karmakar cannot stand or speak. He is the size of a six-month baby.
Malati Singh, 9, was born with a withered leg and a deformed foot. Her
father and grandmother have skin cancer. And eight-year-old Neelu
suffers from a serious blood disorder.

These children and their families live close to the huge Jaduguda
uranium mining complex in the east Indian state of Bihar - within
metres of open dams containing radioactive uranium tailings.

For years, villagers living in the shadow of the mine shrugged their
shoulders at the appalling rate of illness and deformities in their
midst. It was God's will, they told themselves. But now, as the
researchers and environmental activists arrive in Jaduguda, the
villagers suspect the mines, the mill and the tailings dams just might
be to blame for their many woes.

The dams emit radiation many times above the limits considered safe,
and thousands of the poor and ignorant people are forced to eat, drink
and breathe uranium, say anti-nuclear activists.

Hemmed in by a horseshoe of hills, the mines and mill operated by the
Uranium Corporation of India Limited (UCIL) are the sole source of
uranium for India's 10 nuclear power stations.

While uranium is separated from the ore during the milling, more than
85 per cent of its radioactivity lands in the tailings, according to
the International Atomic Energy Agency. Every year the UCIL mill dumps
more than 2,500 tonnes of radioactive waste into the tailings dams of
Jaduguda.

The Jharkhand Organisation Against Radiation (JOAR) claims that at
least 30,000 people in 15 villages are exposed to dangerous radiation
levels. It has nearly 3,000 members and strong links with the pradhans,
or leaders, of the affected villages. Its members are outraged by the
disorders plaguing residents, and by the denials from the mine's
operator that it is in any way to blame. They believe hundreds of
people are suffering from radiation sickness, and they want medical
help and compensation from the government-owned corporation.

Any help will probably be too little, too late for the likes of Neelu,
whose village is just 300 metres from the 100- hectare tailings dams.
His father is a mill worker. Ranjit Lohar also works for UCIL, in one
of the mines. His three-year-old son suffers from a blood disorder and
needs regular transfusions. Mr Lohar complains of acute joint pains and
often cannot work.

Two years ago, according to JOAR, the wife of another UCIL miner gave
birth to a child with such severe deformities they were too ashamed to
speak about it. The child is still alive. Stories like these abound in
the villages.

One village, Chatikucha, is just 30 metres from one of the dams which
is full of liquid and solid by-products of processing uranium ore into
yellow cake, the basis of nuclear fuel.

According to a JOAR survey of seven villages within one kilometre of
the pond, 47 per cent of the women have reported disrupted menstrual
cycles and 18 per cent said they suffered miscarriages or still-births
in the past five years. Nearly all complained of fatigue, weakness and
depression. Nearly a third of the women could not conceive, the survey
found.

The survey reveals that people in these villages also suffer from a
high rate of skin diseases, cancer, bone and brain damage, kidney
damage, hypertension, disorders of the central nervous system,
congenital deformities, insomnia, nausea, dizziness and joint pain.

JOAR president Ghanasyam Biruli suspects that the waste materials
released into the pond are posing a hazard to human and animal health.
Mr Biruli says JOAR became aware of the problem in the early 1990s and
decided to carry out the survey. "When we first raised our voice
against the ecological and health hazards of radiation, we were branded
agents of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence," he says.

The UCIL authorities, however, deny there is radiation above
permissible levels. That is despite their own medical survey two years
ago of 712 people in the two closest villages to the pond. It found 32
were suffering from the "possible effects" of radiation.

UCIL officials take no chances. They get their food from a farm 44
kilometres from the mine.

UCIL chairman and managing director J.L. Bhasin says: "The radiation
level in the villages around the fenced area of the tailing pond is of
the order of the local natural background. Radiation exposure to the
villagers is within the prescribed limits."

A health unit of the Bhaba Atomic Research Centre (BARC) exists at UCIL
to monitor the workplace and personnel, says Mr Bhasin. The unit, he
says, also monitors the environment and the management of wastes . "The
radiation level in the surrounding area is low and unlikely to cause
any deleterious effect," he states.

The company is protected by the Atomic Energy Act, which means it does
not have to divulge its test results nor employees' health records. Not
everyone is prepared to accept its assurances. At the prompting of
JOAR, the environment committee of the Bihar Bidhan Parishad
(legislative council) launched a two-year probe.

It filed its final report in December 1998, and remains sceptical of
the UCIL stand. The committee made the following recommendations:

- The extent of the radiation effect on areas close to the UCIL mines
needs to be extensively studied by BARC.

- There must be foolproof methods to ensure the existing tailings dams,
and those to be constructed in future, do not pose any radiation
hazard.

- The affected people should be rehabilitated in accordance with the
national rehabilitation policy.

- There should be no human settlements within a five-kilometre radius
of the dams.

- Measures should be taken to save all arable land from the effects of
radiation, and a detailed health survey should be undertaken.

The committee expressed shock at the lack of safety at the dam site.
"The people and cattle have free and unchecked access to the area
around the mines. The dumping ponds are unfenced. No proper means for
restricting entrance is there," it said.

As for the effluent, the committee has observed: "The waste material
which contains traces of radioactive materials should be taken to the
effluent treatment plant by pipes.

"It was noticed by the team that the water from the dumping ground is
returned by open drains and by an open step-down arrangement." The
committee feared that this could lead to radioactive materials seeping
into the soil and causing a long-term problem.

Mr Bhasin says that "treated water free from pollutants" is discharged
into a nearby stream. But the committee's investigators detected 0.2
millirem per hour of radiation in "flowing water exposed to the
public". The International Committee for Radiological Protection (ICRP)
puts the maximum safe exposure level at 1 mSv (100 millirem) per year -
0.5 mSv by aquatic sources and 0.5 mSv by atmospheric pathway. In the
areas tested by the committee, people were exposed to more than 30
times that limit.

The committee did not test levels at the existing and old tailings dams
(two older dams have dried up but remain unprotected). Nor did they
test at the mouth of ventilation shafts, where villagers gather for the
cool air pumped from the mines.

According to the ICRP, an area within a 15 kilometre radius of a
uranium mine is thought to pose a radiation danger. In Jaduguda, this
area encompasses nearly 75,000 people in 42 villages.

JOAR activists also believe radiation-polluted water could be finding
its way into the Subarnarekha river system, a source of drinking water
for people in Bihar and West Bengal. Several scientists at BARC and the
Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, Calcutta, on condition of anonymity,
said the disposal process in Jaduguda was far from safe.

"We knew from the very beginning that this system was going to create
problems. But what can you do in the face of a government decision?"
said one scientist, formerly with BARC.

Before mining started, Homi Bhaba, one of India's pioneering nuclear
scientists, and the Swedish engineers who were building the plant,
advised that four villages should be moved because they lay within 500
metres of the tailings dam. More than 30 years later, the villages
remain. While the villagers living close to the mines are believed to
be suffering, the state of the miners who go down pits up to 350 metres
deep is said to be equally bad.

Although UCIL claims no effects of radiation have been seen among its
workers, JOAR cites an abnormally high death rate for miners.

JOAR alleges that miners have no protection against inhaling uranium
dust and radon gas. This deadly exposure, it claims, has taken a heavy
toll. International guidelines say workers at a uranium plant must wear
special plastic clothes. At UCIL, miners and loaders wear ordinary
cotton uniforms provided by the company.

To compound the problem, the miners carry their uniforms home once a
week, where the clothes, containing radioactive uranium dust, are
washed by their wives and children at public ponds.

India's nuclear sites are not open to international inspections and,
because of the Atomic Energy Act, Indian scientists and politicians
cannot speak openly against the country's highly secretive nuclear
program or the condition of the uranium mines.

No-one outside the company knows what level of radiation the workers
are exposed to. Although each employee wears a radiation-measuring
device, its readings are seldom revealed. Moreover, when an employee
falls seriously ill, he is treated at the UCIL hospital and his health
records are retained by the authorities.

After India exploded nuclear devices last year, doors to advanced
nuclear facilities in the West have been closed to Indian nuclear
scientists. In this situation, India cannot get help to upgrade its
nuclear technology, including modern and safer methods of radioactive
waste disposal.

As the flexing of nuclear muscles continue in the Indian subcontinent,
Jaduguda's uranium has become more precious, and anti-nuclear activists
wonder if they can clinch a healthy compromise between the national
nuclear ambition and the well-being of villagers near the mines.

Veteran miners in the villages concede that the company has given them
more jobs and money. But the younger villagers feel the industry has
brought them nothing but despair, disability and an early death.


Copyright  1999. The Sydney Morning Herald. All rights reserved.



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