Cancer deaths near N-plant not normal

Over a year ago, Srinivasan lost one of his twins, Abhi, due to retinoblastoma (eye cancer), and doctors say the cause of the cancer might be nuclear radiation.

“Doctors at Madurai’s Aarvind Eye hospital said that radiation from the nuclear plant caused the disease,” says Abhi’s mother Vinayagam S.

Abhi’s medical report says retinoblastoma was detected in December 2009. Her family was told she would not live for more than a year.

She lived in Sadraskuppam village near the Kalpakkam nuclear facility, 70km from Chennai. Kalpakkam houses two units of Madras Atomic Power Station (MAPS), a Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor, Kalpakkam Atomic Reprocessing Plant and Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research (IGCAR).

There are other such stories in the region. Eleven-year-old Suriya Prakash died on December 30, 2011, only seven months after he was diagnosed with bone cancer. Doctors at Chennai’s Royapeetha Government hospital suspected nuclear radiation as the cause.

Kalpakkam nuclear facility officials insist these deaths are normal. Medical experts add that there are no studies to corroborate that the deaths are not because of nuclear radiation. This was highlighted by the death, due to myeloma, a rare form of radiation-linked bone cancer, of Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) employees at Kalpakkam. (This was reported by DNA, but denied by the Mumbai-based Bhabha Atomic Research Centre.)

DAE officials say the number of deaths is less than the national average. A recent study funded by the DAE and executed by an NGO called ASPIRE, however, did a comparative study between 22 villages within an eight-km radius of the plants and three villages 50 km from the plant.

The full report said the morbidity rate in nearby villages is two to three times higher than distant villages. However, DAE officials only released two pages summing up the report in which they said the incidence of cancer in the surveyed areas was less than the national average. 

When an anti-nuclear activist studied the full report closely, they saw that it showed a 350 per cent excess morbidity in people in proximate villages. “The cancer rate in nearby villages was seven times higher than in the distant villages; the cases of thyroid anomaly was five times higher; and mental retardation was 11 times higher,” elaborated VT Padmanabhan, a research scientist in the health effects of radiation and the member of the European Commission on radiation risk.

The government challenged this interpretation of the report, saying “the likely reason (for the diseases) could be natural variations, inadequate database, differing socioeconomic conditions, and imperfect validations of data or poorer quality of survey in far-off villages”. Manjula Datta, the author of the ASPIRE report, was mum about the incident, saying only that “people are drawing unwarranted conclusion from the report”.

This even though ASPIRE drew a parallel between its findings and those of a 1994 study in villages around the Rawatbhata nuclear facility in Rajasthan, in which the possible effect of nuclear radiation on people living close to a power plant was first highlighted, according to one of the authors, Dr Sanghamitra Gadekar.

The Nuclear Power Corporation of India (NPCIL) says that statistically 98.5 people per lakh die of cancer. In the 22 villages, this figure is 210 per lakh. Publicly, however, NPCIL denies any such statistics. Studies conducted by NPCIL and Tata Memorial Center (TMC) in the last few years do not report a higher rate of cancer.

“Analysis of TMC data revealed that cancer prevalence among wives of MAPS workers was 195 per lakh, which is close to number in the proximate villages given in Manjula Datta’s report,” says Dr Pugazhendhi, who has practiced medicine in Kalpakkam the past two decades.

Kalpakkam’s nuclear facility happens to violate the rule of no permanent habitation, anti-nuclear activists said. AERB requires an exclusion zone of a 1.5 km radius around the reactors, where no permanent human habitation is permitted. It further allows a “sterilized area” up to five km around the plant where population growth is restricted for effective implementation of emergency measures.

DNA visited Kalpakkam and found about 35,000 people living within a three km radius.

That’s outside the facility; inside, there are instances of contract workers who were exposed to high radiation and either died or were sacked. In 2002, Arumugam, 25, a temporary worker died of cancer of the colon. Dr Pugazhendhi said: “It is unusual to contract this cancer at such an early age.”

Kalpakkam nuclear officials did not respond to DNA’s queries. Repeated attempts to talk to the IGCAR’s J Daniel Chellappa and the DAE’s SK Malhotra also proved futile.