Nuclear poison stalking residents
of Russian town
BALEY, Russia--Doctors in Baley,a small gold mining town in the Russian
far eastern region of Chita, had long been puzzled by the high incidences
of babies born without limbs, bald children and adults with abnormally
big heads.
They guessed such deformities
might be related to the nameless mine. located on Baley's outskirts, where
potatoes grew the length of cucumbers. But as Government Enterprise 1084
was top secret, they could discuss their assumptions only in private.
In 1992, the Russian government
disclosed the ghastly facts behind the deformities. "Products 17 and 18"
mined at Baley until the mid-1970s were thorium and uranium. Government
Enterprise 1084 provided material for the Soviet Union's first atomic bomb.
Previously famed as the birthplace
of Genghis Khan, Baley is now better known in the region for being an environmental
disaster even worse than Chernobyl. But while environmentalists are calling
for the complete relocation of the town's 25,000 citizens, government officials
say there's not enough money even to seal the mine.
No one in Baley knew the nature
of Enterprise 1084, say locals. Cattle grazed on the luscious grass covering
the lethal uranium tailings and an auto repair shop was housed in a former
thorium storage facility.
Worse, highly radioactive white
sand was taken from uranium pits at the mine to build and plaster homes,
nurseries, schools and the hospital. Some people now live In homes with
radiation levels which, at 600 micro roentgens per hour, are 10 times the
measurement officially considered safe in Russia.
Until recently, children put on
plays in the Palace of Culture, which emits radiation levels 42 times the
safe level--the same degree of contamination as cars leaving the Chernobyl
nuclear reactor in Ukraine immediately after the accident in April 1986.
"Just visit the children's ward
and you will see the effect such levels have on peoples' health," said
Dr. Valentina Dudareva, a pediatrician at the Baley hospital. "We have
many cases of babies born with mutations, six fingers and six toes, children
with hare lips, wolves mouths, back deformities and huge heads. Often they
have entire limbs missing."
More than 95 percent of the children
in Baley are mentally deficient, according to a report by the east Siberian
branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Rates of stillbirths are five
times higher than the Russian average, of child mortality 2.5- times higher,
of miscarriages and congenital defects in newborns 1.4 times higher and
of Down syndrome four times higher.
"I can say I'm healthy, but everyone
else in my family has been affected by radiation, and my grandson is an
invalid." said Yevgenny Suriva, 45, who lived in an apartment measuring
10 times the save level of radiation.
"My youngest daughter couldn't
speak until she was five. She can't hear well. She has heart disease and
a growth on her cheek. We took her to a doctor in Krasnoyarsk. They measured
her hair--it was radioactive. The doctor told us to go back to where we
had come from.
When the catastrophe came to light,
the town's gold mining company, Baleyzolotoy, started finding people new
houses and tearing down radioactive plaster. But now the head of Baleyzolotoy
is on the run, facing charges of corruption, and the company and relocation
initiative are at a standstill.
The hospital in the town can do
little to help residents. The medicine cupboards of the chief doctor are
empty and he has no diagnostic equipment.
[Published in The Daily Review, Hayward California, p. A6, Sunday, July
20th, 1997, from THE GUARDIAN]
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