[Marxism] Nuclear Plants Raise Leukaemia Threat

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=40610

HEALTH:
Nuclear Plants Raise Leukaemia Threat

Julio Godoy

BERLIN, Dec 27 (IPS) - It has been a miserable month for the Brosowskys, 
a German family in the small city of Marschacht.

On Dec. 8, physicians and health researchers from the University of 
Mainz, 425 km southwest of Berlin, said children living within a radius 
of five kilometres from nuclear power plants are at higher risk of 
contracting leukaemia.

Marschacht, the Brosowskys' hometown, lies only 1.5 km from Kruemmel, 
one of the oldest German nuclear power plants. The town is half an 
hour's drive from Hamburg, 300 km northwest of Berlin.

To the Brosowskys, the report from Mainz came as no surprise. The region 
has long been called a "leukaemia cluster". Since 1990, 18 cases of 
leukaemia have been reported among children in the vicinity of Kruemmel 
- three times the national average.

The authors of the study, looking at data collected between 1980 and 
2003, listed 77 cases of children suffering from cancer, including 37 
cases of leukaemia, in regions around nuclear power plants. The national 
average for similarly sized groups is 48 cancer cases, and 17 of 
leukaemia. That indicates twice as many cases of leukaemia among 
children living near nuclear power plants.

"Our study shows that the risk for children under five years of 
contracting leukaemia grows with proximity of their homes to nuclear 
power plants," Maria Blettner, director of the research group at the 
University of Mainz told IPS.

"We all hope that our children will get away with it," says Sabine 
Brosowsky, mother of three. "But there is always anxiety at home."

She and her family cannot leave Marschacht. "We were living here long 
before the nuclear power plant was installed," Brosowsky told IPS. "We 
want to still be living here well after the plant has been dismantled."

But December brought bad news. On Dec. 16, Rambo, the family cat, had to 
be put to sleep. The cat had numerous tumours suspected to be cancerous.

The Mainz findings are consistent with others in France and Britain. In 
France, one such study in 1997, and another in 2001, showed a higher 
incidence of leukaemia among children living near nuclear power plants.

Jean Francois Viel, professor in public health at the France Comte 
university 300 km east of Paris, had found in 1997 that children 
frequenting the beaches at Cotentin on the Atlantic Coast, near the 
nuclear power plant of La Hague, or living within a radius of 35 km from 
the plant, suffered leukaemia well above the national average.

The 2001 study, by Alfred Spira, researcher at the National Institute of 
Health and Medical Research, confirmed Viel's results. Spira, who had 
first rejected the results of Viel's study, found a disproportionately 
high number of cases of leukaemia among people below 25 living within 35 
km of La Hague.

When the sample was reduced to children between five and nine years of 
age living within 10 km of the nuclear facility, the cases of leukaemia 
were 6.38 times the national average.

In Britain, a 2002 study confirmed an older one in 1990 that the 
incidence of leukaemia among children of workers at the Sellafield 
nuclear power plant 400 km north of London was twice the national average.

As with Viel's study, health and nuclear authorities had dismissed the 
results of the older study.

But the June 2002 investigation by Heather Dickinson and Louise Parker 
from the Children's Cancer Research Unit at the university of Newcastle 
confirmed the results. Using data from 1957 to 1991, the researchers 
found that children of workers at Sellafield were more likely to suffer 
leukaemia and non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) -- a group of cancers affecting 
the white blood cells -- than the national average.

In their study, Dickinson and Parker claim that the Sellafield workers' 
children born in Seascale (the village near the Sellafield nuclear 
reprocessing plant) ran on average 15 times higher risk of developing 
leukaemia and NHL, and that the Sellafield workers' children outside 
Seascale ran twice the risk.

As with the studies in France and in Britain, the Mainz study has been 
dismissed by some as a statistical game. Minister for the environment 
Sigmar Gabriel, who opposes nuclear power, said he would order a review 
of the study, but conservative politicians criticised it as 
irresponsible and hysterical.

In a debate in the German parliament, the Bundestag, Dec. 16, Christian 
Democratic Union (CDU) representative Georg Nuesslein said "the study 
only shows that there is need for more research." The CDU rules Germany 
in coalition with the Social Democratic Party (SPD).

"You do not eliminate automobiles because every year 130 children are 
killed in traffic accidents," said CDU representative Jens Koeppen 
during the debate. Members of the opposition right-wing Liberal 
Democratic Party (FDP) argued similarly against the study.

Under a decision taken by the former SPD-led government in 2000, Germany 
should phase out nuclear power by 2020. But now the FDP and the CDU want 
to extend the life of nuclear power beyond that year.

Some statisticians have strongly criticised the study. "It is as with 
the Texan sharpshooter fallacy," statistician Hans-Peter Beck-Bornholdt 
was quoted as saying in the conservative weekly Die Zeit. "If you shoot 
at random at a barn, and draw a bulls-eye around the bullet holes 
afterwards, you have proof of a very high probability of hitting success."

But the federal agency for irradiation protection has called the study a 
key argument against nuclear power. "Given the particularly high risk of 
nuclear radiation for children, and the inadequacy of data on the 
emissions of nuclear power plants, we must take the correlation between 
distance of residence and high risk of leukaemia very seriously," 
Wolfram Koenig, director of the agency, said at a press conference.

Eberhard Greiser, member of the experts group tasked with review of the 
study, has said "the correlation is evident and very plausible."

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