Antinuclear

Evidence of cancer in the environment near uranium mines

(Australia) (For more Australian news go to

• nuclear news Australia  )
  

Is there evidence of cancer in the environment near uranium mines?

Arch1   5 August 09

The British Columbia Medical Association had this to say in 1988:

“Epidemiological and experimental evidence indicates that alpha radiation  [from radon]  is more effective (per unit dose) in producing cancer when exposure is at low dose rates over long periods of time, than when the equivalent dose is given at a high rate for short periods of time.(26)

`Uranium tailings will remain radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years, and will require such expensive long-term surveillance and maintenance by government and the local citizenry as to make statements about uranium mining providing revenue very misleading’

They also concluded that nuclear industry proponents have tended to minimize risk through lack of knowledge, generalizations, quoting outdated studies, dilution of risk estimates, unsubstantiated arguments, personal bias, basing conclusions on inadequate studies, doublethink, and assuming people cannot absorb the full truth…………..

Cancer, for example. Cases among Aborigines near Australia’s biggest uranium mine appear to be almost double the normal rate, according to a study by the Federal Government’s leading indigenous research body.

The study compared Aborigines diagnosed with cancer in the Kakadu region with the cancer rate among all Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory from 1994 to 2003.

It found the diagnosis rate was 90 per cent higher than expected in the Kakadu region, with 27 cases reported.  If the diagnosis rate had been proportional to the territory’s overall Aboriginal population, there would have been 14 cases.

The study also found there had been no monitoring in the past 20 years of the Ranger mine’s impact on the health of local indigenous people.  Yet since 1981, there have been more than 120 spillages and leaks of contaminated water at the mine, located in the World Heritage-listed Kakadu National Park.

http://arch1design.com/blog/?p=1859

August 7, 2009 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | uranium | antinuclear, nuclear, radioactive, uranium