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NIGER: Desert residents pay high price for lucrative uranium mining | Economy Environment Health & Nutrition Conflict Water & Sanitation | Feature

NIGER: Desert residents pay high price for lucrative uranium mining IRIN 1 April 09 DAKAR,  – After a visit in late March from French President Nicholas Sarkozy to Niger, residents in the uranium-exporting desert country continue questioning whether AREVA, a company primarily owned by the French government, will honour its promise to protect communities from mining hazards.

Studies and residents’ testimonies have pointed to health and environmental dangers from mining operations owned and operated by both AREVA’s subsidiaries and the Niger government…………………… The AREVA majority-owned mine called COMINAK (Mining Company of Akouta) commissioned an environmental study of its operations in Arlit in 2006, which reported that the number of deaths linked to respiratory infections was twice as high in the mining town (16 percent) as in the rest of the country.

Arlit’s population is 110,000.

“The wind carries dust contaminated with the long-lasting radium [time required for it to lose toxicity is more than 1,600 years] and lead…Samples taken from 5km within site…Sandstorms [and] atmospheric waste from mines could be aggravating factors for pulmonary [illnesses] in the region,” the researchers wrote in COMINAK’s environmental study. ………………. Radioactive waste – possibly used in road construction – may be responsible for the abnormally high levels of radiation, according to CRIIRAD. In 2007 CRIIRAD researchers wrote that radiation levels were up to 100 times above average in front of the AREVA-funded hospital near the COMINAK mine…………………… But environmental studies carried out by CRIIRAD and Sherpa in 2005 in mining communities showed water radiation levels up to 110 times higher than World Health Organization (WHO) safe drinking water standards in industrial areas

IRIN Africa | West Africa | Gabon Niger | NIGER: Desert residents pay high price for lucrative uranium mining | Economy Environment Health & Nutrition Conflict Water & Sanitation | Feature

April 1, 2009 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | indigenous issues, Niger | antinuclear, nuclear, radioactive, uranium