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Millions affected by nuclear tests in Kazakhstan?

Soviet nuclear tests leave Kazakh fallout

BBC News 7 Sept 09

Decades of Soviet nuclear testing on the steppes of Kazakhstan have been blamed for an alarming number of health problems suffered by residents in the area.

Now scientists are trying to determine whether the victims are passing on faulty genes to their children, the BBC’s Rayhan Demytrie reports…..

..It began in 1949 when the Soviet Union’s first atomic bomb was detonated in an area of nearby steppe known as the Polygon.

The testing continued for 40 years. Nearly 500 nuclear explosions were carried out. More than 100 of them were above-ground devices that sent nuclear fallout far beyond the test area.

At the time, thousands of people who lived within a 300,000 sq km territory surrounding the Polygon were exposed to high levels of radiation.

Saim Balmukhanov, a veteran Kazakh radiologist, was one of the first doctors to be admitted to the villages affected by radiation in the 1950s.

“We found out that leukaemia among children was 10 times higher than the Soviet average and among adults it was five times higher. The Soviet authorities said it was because of the poor living conditions of the Kazakhs,” he said.

“Many women in those villages were suffering from miscarriages and lots of babies were born with birth defects. But people were hiding it, because in Kazakh culture no-one would marry into such a family.”

Today, nearly half a million people have officially been recognised by the Kazakh authorities as affected by nuclear testing…………..

scientists now are trying to understand – whether children born to parents or grandparents who were exposed to radiation have inherited faulty genes damaged by nuclear testing.

A new lab equipped with modern technology at the Institute of Radiation Medicine is allowing scientists for the first time to carry out such DNA research.

BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Soviet nuclear tests leave Kazakh fallout

September 7, 2009 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | 1, environment, Kazakhstan | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear wastes, radiation, radioactive, uranium