- LONDON (Reuters) - Congenital deformities in children in Belarus have
risen by 83 percent since the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, a weekly science
magazine said on Wednesday.
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- The increase in cases of cleft palate,
Down's syndrome and deformed limbs and organs is highest in areas hardest
hit by the fallout from the world's worst nuclear disaster 12 years ago.
-
- But even in lightly contaminated regions
of the former Soviet republic doctors have reported a 24 percent rise in
deformities, that earlier scientific studies have linked to radiation damage.
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- "The Chernobyl accident continues
to reap a grim harvest," New Scientist said.
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- The latest statistics resulted from a
re-analysis of data collected in 1996 for a national genetic monitoring
programme. Rose Goncharova, of the Institute of Genetics and Cytology at
the Academy of Science in Minsk, re-examined the data.
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- "Goncharova's study is the first
to quantify what local researchers have believed for years," the magazine
said.
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- Her results contradict the findings of
a 1996 World Health Organisation meeting in Vienna that concluded there
had been no increases in diseases in Belarus, apart from thyroid cancer,
because of the the nuclear pollution.
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- Belarus, now an independent state, bore
the brunt of the nuclear fallout when the Soviet reactor in neighbouring
Ukraine blew up in 1986.
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- An Italian study of Belarus children
exposed to radioactive iodine from Chernobyl showed they may be more susceptible
to thyroid disease and cancer.
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- Similar thyroid cancers have also been
reported in people exposed to radiation following other nuclear accidents
and atomic bomb explosions.
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