Doctors in Afghanistan say rates of some health problems affecting children have doubled in the last two years.
Some scientists say the rise is linked to use of weapons containing depleted uranium (DU) by the US-led coalition that invaded the country in 2001.
AMONG the many environmental concerns surrounding nuclear power plants, there is one that provokes public anxiety like no other: the fear that children living near nuclear facilities face an increased risk of cancer. Though a link has long been suspected, it has never been proven. Now that seems likely to change.
Studies in the 1980s revealed increased incidences of childhood leukaemia near nuclear installations at Windscale (now Sellafield), Burghfield and Dounreay in the UK. Later studies near German nuclear facilities found a similar effect. The official response was that the radiation doses from the nearby plants were too low to explain the increased leukaemia. The Committee on Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment, which is responsible for advising the UK government, finally concluded that the explanation remained unknown but was not likely to be radiation.
PARIS: As concern over global warming grows, the nuclear industry is stepping up efforts to portray itself as a viable source of clean energy. Governments are increasingly receptive, including the British government, which last year backed the construction of a new generation of nuclear power plants.
Antinuclear environmentalists say that approach is like avoiding an oncoming truck by driving off a precipice.
EARTHWORMS WERE pushed into the firing line last week after a resumption of the testing of depleted uranium shells at Dundrennan.
Significant levels of radioactive uranium isotopes were found in the flesh of worms at the Ministry of Defence's Dumfries weapons range last year. Despite concerns from environmentalists and the international community, the MoD last week started a series of tests of depleted uranium (DU) shells, supposed "safety checks".
By Clive Cookson, Science Editor
A big study of nuclear workers has suggested an unexpectedly strong link between radiation exposure and heart disease.
The study, published yesterday, analysed health records and radiation doses for 65,000 people employed at four nuclear sites - Sellafield, Capenhurst and Springfields, in north-west England, and Chaplecross in south-west Scotland - between 1946 and 2005.
DW-WORLD - Children living near nuclear power stations are more likely to suffer leukemia than those living farther away, a report funded by the German government has found, according to German media.
"Our study confirmed that in Germany a connection has been observed between the distance of a domicile to the nearest nuclear power plant ... and the risk of developing cancer, such as leukemia, before the fifth birthday," the daily Süddeutsche Zeitung quoted the report as saying.
London Evening Standard, 4 December 2007
The organs of miscarried and stillborn babies may have been harvested for testing by nuclear scientists, it emerged yesterday.
Victims of road accidents could also have been part of the grisly programme set up to establish whether workers at Sellafield had suffered radiation poisoning.
Le Monde, 26 September 2007
You could easily miss them. But for five months now, every day, two or three people, with posters around their necks, stand at an intersection in Geneva, from 10.00 until 18.00, Monday to Friday, facing the World Health Organization, and distributing to passers-by a dossier entitled Health Catastrophe of Chernobyl: WHO guilty of non assistance to populations in danger”.
In Slovakia, plans by Canadian company Tournigan Gold Corporation to open a uranium mine near the Eastern city of Kosice have met with strong opposition from locals. Almost 16,000 people signed a petition requiring the Ministry of Environment not to authorize the project.
