The article entitled "Health Survey Around an Indian Nuclear Power Plant"

Health Survey Around an Indian Nuclear Power Plant

The article entitled "Health Survey Around an Indian Nuclear Power Plant" (www.ieer.org/sdafiles/ ) was published in "Science for Democratic Action" a newsletter of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER).The authors of this paper, Doctors Gadekar, are the editors of "Anumukti, A Journal Devoted to Non-Nuclear India," which proclaims itself "South Asia’s Only Anti-Nuclear Magazine." They say that they became confirmed anti-nuclear activists after the 1986 Chernobyl accident.

"Health Survey Around an Indian Nuclear Power Plant" is a report of a survey made in 1991 on illnesses including fevers of short and long duration, breathing difficulties and persistent coughs, body aches and pain in joints, digestive problems, skin diseases, weakness and debility, solid tumors, conjunctivitis and cataracts, and acquired deformities and polio, among a sample of about 2500 persons living within 10 km of the Candu nuclear reactors at Rawatbhata, the Rajasthan Atomic PowerStation, as compared to a similar number living over 50 km away. The first reactor went critical in August 1972 and commercial in December 1973 while the second became commercial in April 1981.

In EVERY category, they found more disease among the first group than among the second, the differences ranging from barely significant to as much as a factor of six. None of these conditions is known to be connected with chronic exposure to ionizing radiation; but some occur under exposure to extremely high doses, much higher than are ever likely to be encountered in the vicinity of a nuclear power station, except perhaps in the event of a major accident like Chernobyl. The report states : "The most significant differences in health were related to untoward pregnancy outcomes. These were observed in the whole range, including significantly higher number of miscarriages, still-births, deaths among newborn babies and congenital deformities amongst both the living and those who had died within the last few years." Yet Table 3 shows that such differences between nearby and distant villages existed before 1971.

A serious shortcoming in this report is the absence of any measure of the ionizing radiation or radioactivity in the vicinity of the nuclear power plant or in the nearby and distant villages of the study. This omission is surprising since Dr Surenda Gadekar is a nuclear physicist who has held a post-doctoral research position at Iowa State University.

The report was published in International Perspectives in Public Health,Volume 10 (1994), and there seems to have been no echo to be easily found on the Internet. The editor of that periodical is Dr Rosalie Bertell, an anti-nuclear activist; her latest cause is based on the notion that depleted uranium ammunition is the origin of the nebulous Gulf War and Balkan War Syndromes (See http://www.ccnr.org/bertell_bio.html and http://www.ratical.org/radiation/RBanNun.html)

The only external reference cited in this paper is a report by WISE, the Worldwide Information Service on Energy, which presents itself as a neutral organization. In fact, WISE is known to be closely related to Greenpeace in its personnel, its locations, and its finances.

Let me note finally that IEER is an organization which usually presents anti-nuclear views. Their views are not neutral. I find their writings often to be pseudo-scientific in an attempt to gain legitimacy. It is their privilege to hold anti-nuclear views, but their readers should be aware of their consistently anti-nuclear bias.

In summary, one is reminded of the caution addressed to a would-be investor, "If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is". In the case at hand, "If it sounds too terrible to be true, it probably is."

Bruno Comby

President of EFN

Environmentalists For Nuclear Energy