Nuke Test Still Affecting Kazakstan
By Birgit Brauer
Copyright 1998 Associated Press
December 9, 1998
Dispensary No. 4, set on the vast plains of Central Asia, was a medical clinic
unlike any other in the Soviet Union.
Its secret task was to collect
radiation data on people living near Semipalatinsk, the huge nuclear testing site in
northern Kazakstan.
"I knew what was going on, but I didn't tell anyone because I didn't want to get
15 years (in a labor camp) or, worse, shot," said Boris Gusev, who was the
clinic's chief doctor until 1991.
Gusev, 60, says he has done everything he
can to help people with his knowledge since Kazakstan gained independence in
1991 and the sprawling test site was closed.
"I feel very good because with what I knew and saw, I could do something to
help the people," said Gusev, now deputy director of the state-run Scientific
Research Institute for
Radiation, Medicine and Ecology.
But Gusev's change of heart comes too late for some of the estimated 1.6
million
people exposed to high
radiation levels during the 470 nuclear tests the Soviet military conducted here between
1949 and 1989. More than 100 of the tests took place above ground.
Before some explosions, local residents were told to leave their houses and
stay outside. The ground would shake, glass would
shatter and plates would fall from the cupboards. Sometimes buildings would
collapse, residents said.
No one told them that looking at the nuclear mushroom cloud could damage their
eyes or worse. No one warned them their children and grandchildren would lose
their teeth, turn gray in their teens, suffer birth defects or die of
cancer.
"The nature of the deformities that resulted they're just gruesome beyond
belief," said Dr. James Warf, a chemistry professor at the University of
Southern California who has worked on nuclear projects and studied the effects
of
radiation in Semipalatinsk.
Warf described one instance where a
stillborn baby had abnormally large ears and a single eye in the middle of its
forehead.
"This all comes from illnesses caused by radioactive exposure," he said in a
telephone interview.
The people were meant to be part of the experiment, and the results are only
now coming in. Kazakstan's cash-strapped
government has done little to address the problem in recent years, and Russia
simply ignores the issue.
Still, some Western experts have begun researching the effects of
radiation on the region. The Baylor College of Medicine in Texas has undertaken a
project to wade through old data that is now
becoming available.
"Unfortunately, the types and duration of exposure, controversy regarding
historical data, the extended period of secrecy, and current economic and
health problems make it quite challenging," said Dr. Armin Weinberger, the
head of the Center for Cancer Control Research at Baylor.
At the Home
for Psychiatric and Neurological Patients in Semipalatinsk, the vast majority
of the 350 patients are believed to be victims of
radiation, suffering from mental retardation, schizophrenia and physical malformations,
said director Shaiza Rysbekova.
Kazakstan's government pays only a fraction of the $800,000 needed to run the
home annually and medical
staff have not been paid for two months, Rysbekova said.
The state's lack of money also has prevented the payment of compensation to
many
radiation victims. Residents who lived in the Semipalatinsk area during the nuclear
tests are entitled to a one-time compensation.
The state made payments in
1996, but only 56,445 pensioners received any money, getting the equivalent of
$215 each.
It's still unclear how many people actually suffered health problems as a
result of the nuclear tests. All data collected during the Soviet era was sent
to Moscow and has not been
made public.
Kazak officials say that for every 100,000 people in Semipalatinsk, 245 will
contract cancer, compared with 174 in Kazakstan as a whole. The pre-natal
center in Semipalatinsk said that of every 1,000 births in 1997, 400 babies had
some
health problems or deformities and 47 died.
But statistics available in Kazakstan are flawed, and probably understate the
problem.
"I was a doctor and was not allowed to diagnose cancer," said Aliya Begalina,
now head of disease prevention at the Semipalatinsk Department of Health.
Begalina said she was not
trained to recognize or treat the symptoms of
radiation sickness, such as swollen thyroid glands.
"If someone died of cancer, we had to diagnose a heart problem or another
disease," she said.
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