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Inexplicable leukemias rock small German rural region

Inexplicable leukemias rock small German rural region Google News By Arnaud Bouvier –  7 July 09  GEESTHACHT, Germany (AFP) — For 20 years, children from a small rural northern German region — where Alfred Nobel invented dynamite — have been contracting leukemia at a higher rate than anywhere else in the world and no one knows exactly why.Nineteen cases of leukemia among children under 15 have been recorded since 1989 in the region of Elbmarsch, some 30 kilometres (19 miles) from the city of Hamburg, three or four times the average rate.”Such a high rate of leukemia is unique in the world,” according to Hayo Dieckmann, a health official in the nearby town of Lueneburg who is also a medical doctor…………………………………………..

Campaigners, however, point out that within two kilometres of the region lie the Kruemmel nuclear power station and the GKSS scientific research centre, both of which they believe are to blame for the leukemia outbreaks.

The “citizens’ association against leukemia in Elbmarsch” (BI) believes that a nuclear accident took place at the GKSS centre, only six months after the devastating meltdown at Chernobyl.

The campaigners say that a radiation leak occurred at the centre — which operates a small nuclear reactor for research purposes — on September 12, 1986, which was later covered up by the authorities……………………………

Campaigners also point an accusing finger at the Kruemmel nuclear power plant which reopened on June 24 after a fire broke out there two years ago.

The plant hit headlines again at the weekend in the wake of two further malfunctions, one of which plunged part of Hamburg into darkness and knocked out the city’s traffic lights.

At the end of 2007, a national survey of nuclear power stations in Germany showed that the risk of contracting cancer rose dramatically for children living near a power plant.

AFP: Inexplicable leukemias rock small German rural region

July 7, 2009 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | environment, Germany | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear wastes, radiation, radioactive