Sunday September 6, 2009, 7:52 am
India's generation of children crippled by uranium waste

Observer investigation uncovers link between dramatic rise in birth defects in Punjab and pollution from coal-fired power stations


Gurpreet Sigh, 7, who has cerebral palsy and microcephaly, and is from Sirsar, 50km from the Punjabi town of Bathinda. He is being treated at the Baba Farid centre for Special Children in Bathinda Photograph: Gethin Chamberlain

Their heads are too large or too small, their limbs too short or too bent. For some, their brains never grew, speech never came and their lives are likely to be cut short: these are the children it appears that India would rather the world did not see, the victims of a scandal with potential implications far beyond the country's borders.

Some sit mutely, staring into space, lost in a world of their own; others cry out, rocking backwards and forwards. Few have any real control over their own bodies. Their anxious parents fret over them, murmuring soft words of encouragement, hoping for some sort of miracle that will free them from a nightmare.

Health workers in the Punjabi cities of Bathinda and Faridkot knew something was terribly wrong when they saw a sharp increase in the number of birth defects, physical and mental abnormalities, and cancers. They suspected that children were being slowly poisoned.

But it was only when a visiting scientist arranged for tests to be carried out at a German laboratory that the true nature of their plight became clear. The results were unequivocal. The children had massive levels of uranium in their bodies, in one case more than 60 times the maximum safe limit.

The results were both momentous and mysterious. Uranium occurs naturally throughout the world, but is normally only present in low background levels which pose no threat to human health. There was no obvious source in the Punjab that could account for such high levels of contamination.

And if a few hundred children – spread over a large area – were contaminated, how many thousands more might also be affected? Those are questions the Indian authorities appear determined not to answer. Staff at the clinics say they were visited and threatened with closure if they spoke out. The South African scientist whose curiosity exposed the scandal says she has been warned by the authorities that she may not be allowed back into the country.

But an Observer investigation has now uncovered disturbing evidence to suggest a link between the contamination and the region's coal-fired power stations. It is already known that the fine fly ash produced when coal is burned contains concentrated levels of uranium and a new report published by Russia's leading nuclear research institution warns of an increased radiation hazard to people living near coal-fired thermal power stations.

The test results for children born and living in areas around the state's power stations show high levels of uranium in their bodies. Tests on ground water show that levels of uranium around the plants are up to 15 times the World Health Organisation's maximum safe limits. Tests also show that it extends across large parts of the state, which is home to 24 million people.

The findings have implications not only for the rest of India – Punjab produces two-thirds of the wheat in the country's central reserves and 40% of its rice – but for many other countries planning to build new power plants, including China, Russia, India, Germany and the US. In Britain, there are plans for a coal-fired station at the Kingsnorth facility in Kent.

The victims are being treated at the Baba Farid centres for special children in Bathinda – where there are two coal-fired thermal plants – and in nearby Faridkot. It was staff at those clinics who first voiced concerns about the increasing numbers of admissions involving severely handicapped children. They were being born with hydrocephaly, microcephaly, cerebral palsy, Down's syndrome and other complications. Several have already died.

Dr Pritpal Singh, who runs the Faridkot clinic, said the numbers of children affected by the pollution had risen dramatically in the past six or seven years. But he added that the Indian authorities appeared determined to bury the scandal. "They can't just detoxify these kids, they have to detoxify the whole Punjab. That is the reason for their reluctance," he said. "They threatened us and said if we didn't stop commenting on what's happening, they would close our clinic.

"But I decided that if I kept silent it would go on for years and no one would do anything about it. If I keep silent then the next day it will be my child. The children are dying in front of me."

Dr Carin Smit, the South African clinical metal toxicologist who arranged for the tests to be carried out in Germany, said that the situation could no longer be ignored. "There is evidence of harm for these children in my care and... it is an imperative that their bodies be cleaned up and their metabolisms be supported to deal with such a devastating presence of radioactive material," she said.

"If the contamination is as widespread as it would appear to be – as far west as Muktsar on the Pakistani border, and as far east as the foothills of Himachal Pradesh – then millions are at high risk and every new baby born to a contaminated mother is at risk."

In the Faridkot centre last week, Harmanbir Kaur, 15, was rocking gently backwards and forwards. When her test results came back, they showed she had 10 times the safe limit of uranium in her body. Her brother, Naunihal Singh, six, has double the safe level.

Harmanbir was born in Muktsar, 25 miles from Faridkot. Her mother, Kulbir Kaur, 37, watched her slowly degenerate from a healthy baby into the girl she is today, dribbling constantly, unable to feed herself, lost in a world of her own. "God knows what sin I have committed. When we go to our village people say there is a curse of God on you, but I don't believe so," she said. "Every part of this area is affected. We never imagined that there would be uranium in our kids."

A few miles down the road in Bathinda, Sukhminder Singh, 48, a farmer, watched his son Kulwinder, 13, staring into space while curling his hands up under his chin. Tests showed Kulwinder has 19 times the maximum safe level of uranium in his body. He has cerebral palsy and has already had seven operations to unbend his arms and legs.

"The government should investigate it because if our child is affected it will also affect future generations," he said. "What are they waiting for? How many children do they want to be affected? Another generation? I can leave the house for work, but my wife is always with him. Sometimes she cries and asks why God is playing with our luck. Every morning he sends a new trouble."

Doni Choudhary, aged 15 months, is waiting to be tested, though staff say he shows similar symptoms to those who have tested positive and are treating him for suspected uranium poisoning. His mother, Neelum, 22, from the state capital, Chandigarh, says he was born with hydrocephaly. His legs are useless.

"He is dependent on others. After me, who can care for him?" Neelum asks. "He tries to speak but he can't express himself and my heart cries. When will he understand that his legs don't work? What will he feel?"

India's reluctance to acknowledge the problem is hardly unexpected: the country is heavily committed to an expansion of thermal plants in Punjab and other states. Neither was it any surprise when a team of scientists from the Department of Atomic Energy visited the area and concluded that while the concentration of uranium in drinking water was "slightly high", there was "nothing to worry" about. Yet some tests recorded levels of uranium in the ground water as high as 224mcg/l (micrograms per litre) – 15 times higher than the safe level of 15mcg/l recommended by the WHO. (The US Environmental Protection Agency sets a maximum safe level of 20mcg/l.)

Some scientists have proposed that the ground water may have been contaminated by contact with granite rocks that rise above the ground about 150 miles away to the south in the Tosham hills, in Haryana state. A continuation of these rocks is believed to run deep below the thick alluvial deposits that form the plains of Punjab.

Increasing demands for water, in particular to irrigate the rice crop, have led to greater dependence on tube wells. That in turn is depleting the water table in the state at an alarming rate – by at least 30cm a year, according to one study – with the result that water is being drawn from ever deeper levels. However, this theory seems to be in conflict with evidence from parents of many of the children, who say they use the mains supply, which comes from other sources.

There have also been claims that the contamination may have been exacerbated by depleted uranium carried on the wind from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. At a seminar in Amritsar in April, Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat, a former chief of the naval staff, suggested that areas within a 1,000-mile radius of Kabul – including Punjab – may be affected by depleted uranium. Although the prevailing monsoon winds blow either from the north-east or the south-west, there are times when a depression originating in the Mediterranean can result in rainfall in Punjab.

Sunday September 6, 2009, 7:53 am
cont'd to end:

Meanwhile, smoke continues to pour from the power station chimneys and lorries shuttle backwards and forwards, taking away the fly ash to be mixed into cement at the neighbouring Ambuja factory. Inside the plant last week, there was ash everywhere, forming drifts, clinging to the skin, getting into the throat.

Ravindra Singh, the plant's security officer, said that most of the ash went to the cement works, while the rest was dumped in ash ponds. It would be more efficient to burn better quality coal that left less ash, he said. Every day the plant burned 6,000 tons of coal. He had no idea how much ash that generated, but the stream of lorries to take it away was continuous.

The first coal-fired power station in Punjab was commissioned in Bathinda in 1974, followed by another in nearby Lehra Mohabat in 1998. There is a third to the east, at Rupnagar.

Tests on ground water in villages in Bathinda district found the highest average concentration of uranium – 56.95mcg/l – in the town of Bucho Mandi, a short distance from the Lehra Mohabat ash pond. Such a concentration of uranium means the lifetime cancer risk in the village was more than 153 times higher than in the normal population. Tests on ground water in the village of Jai Singh Wala, close to the Bathinda ash pond, showed an average level of 52.79mcg/l. People living there said they used the ash to spread on the roads and even on the floors of their homes.

Scientists in Punjab who have studied the presence of uranium in the state have dismissed the government denials as a whitewash. "If the government says there is a high level of uranium in an area that would create havoc – they don't want to openly say something like that," said Dr Chander Parkash, a wetland ecologist working at Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar.

Both he and Dr Surinder Singh, who works at the same university and has also carried out tests on the state's ground water, said it was clear that uranium was present in large quantities and should be investigated further.

Another scientist, Dr GS Dhillon, a former chief engineer with the irrigation department, is convinced that the uranium has come from the power stations and accuses the authorities of failing to control the ash ponds, which he believes have contaminated the ground water.

Their concerns are bolstered by a report from the Kurchatov Institute in Moscow, Russia's leading state organisation for nuclear research, published last month in the Russian Academy of Sciences' Thermal Engineering journal. The report's author, DA Krylov, raised serious doubts about the safety of coal-fired thermal power stations (TPSs), concluding that radiation from ash residues and from chimney emissions built up around coal-fired power plants and posed an additional risk to those living and working in the area.

"Natural radionuclides contained in coals concentrate in ash-and-slag wastes and gas-aerosol emissions as these coals are fired at TPSs, with the result that an elevated man-made radiation background builds up around TPSs," the report stated. The situation became worse, the report said, if ash was used as a construction material or as a filling material for roads.

A previous report in the magazine Scientific American, citing various sources, claimed that fly ash emitted by power plants "carries into the surrounding environment 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy", adding: "When coal is burned into fly ash, uranium and thorium are concentrated at up to 10 times their original levels."

Sunday September 6, 2009, 7:57 am
There is a photo gallery with photographs of 6 of these children. Their sweet, often smiling faces belie the illnesses and birth defects they suffer from.

Sunday September 6, 2009, 8:50 am
I wonder what effect the Observer investigation and findings will have on the Indian govt.

Will they continue denying the extent of the contamination and the damage done? Will they continue pointing to 'other' sources to explain this massive contamination?

Will they continue to allow the toxic ash to be used in making cement, despite the evidence that this heightens the toxicity?

Will they do as they threatened and prevent South African scientist, clinical metal toxicologist Dr Carin Smit, from returning to India?

Monday September 7, 2009, 6:21 am
Criminal denial & irresponsibility once again on behalf of the leadership involved. We have known since the beginning of the industrial revolution that pollution is dangerous, and methods of providing needed energy which are far less toxic have been developed over the years. That such technologies are not substituting dangerous practices is an outrage against humanity.

Monday September 7, 2009, 9:32 am
I took a look at the pictures which came with this article. Yes, the children are deformed and yes, the children will have all kinds of health problems for the rest of their short lives. There is NO known cure for uranium infected kids and people, animals and in crops.

This reminds me of DU - Depleted Uranium being used in military weapons.

The practice of using Uranium and its by-products in coal needs to be haled immediately.

TY, Alba.

Monday September 7, 2009, 1:38 pm
This is truly horrible. And they could have learned from our mistakes. Thanks Alba.

Monday September 7, 2009, 3:29 pm
You cannot currently send a star to Pamylle because you have done so within the last week.

You cannot currently send a star to Nancy because you have done so within the last week.

Jim, at least, got his.

Tuesday September 8, 2009, 5:25 am
I was distressed not finding a petition, to pressure the Indian govt to shut down the plants and detoxify Punjab; to allocate special funds for the children, as well, since Dr Smit & the medical center that called on Dr Smit to assess the children their usual therapies could not treat.

I have found a letter on Dr Smit's site, in which she makes an urgent appeal for the children of Punjab.

This is an excerpt from the letter she wrote to a company named Kirkman Products, which had already supplied some nutrients which Dr Smit had used in treating the children before the tests. In this letter, she pleads for more to be sent regularly & explains :

The implications are huge: Suddenly Northern India is in the spotlight. It falls within the radius of 1000 miles from Kabul, Afghanistan and even closer to Bhagdad, Iraq, where depleted uranium munitions were used by US forces in missiles, bombs and other armaments and experts say that the fall-out of this deadly waste product of nuclear practice can spread by means of trade winds for up to 1000 miles. The number of people who fall within that radius is a shocking 857 million souls!

I have been devastated by the state of illness of the people of Northern India, and where we are is near the border of Pakistan, where a nuclear reactor is a mere 150 kms away. The cities and villages in the border regions of Punjab are of the most toxic places on the planet and here people literally die like flies from cancers, birth defects, brain injury, neuro-degeneration and the like.

We have been touched at the deepest level possible by the plight of these children in the Baba Farid Centre for Special Children. During the past 48 hours I consulted with no less than 34 parents, whose children have been badly damaged by what is going on in this region.

The stories of heartache, loss, devastation and suffering can't really be put into words - one needs to see it for oneself.

.../...

Please approach your management on our behalf and ask whether Kirkman wouldn't consider donanting monthly supplies to the project whilst we work as an international collaboration team to secure funds from government to effect nuclear waste management and acquire tools to clear the environment in which these kids are living and dying.

We would like to provide them with
* amino acids (URGENTLY NEEDED as they are vegetarians and chelation requires high sulfur-based anti-oxidants and amino acids to protect liver, kidneys and adrenals,
* high anti-oxidants (buffered Vitamin C powders),
* Calcium Powder,
* Magnesium Citrate Powder,
* Taurine, GABA and some
* Milk Thistle as well as
* B-Complex PRO Support, please.

Another huge need is for
* probiotics as they suffer from chronic digestive problems -
especially as uranium targets the gut!

Since last year several of the children died - we came back to test a group which had been reduced by a certain percentage purely because we couldn't get to them fast enough.

The really good news is that the Times of India carried an article today about how relief will be given to this project, as customs will no longer levy duties on supplements donated by companies like yourselves!

They have the Minister of Health of Punjab's promise that any foreign aid will be expedited into this project.

Please help us to help them. I am here in my private capacity and am donating my time and expertise. The colleague who accompanied me, is a teacher of CP and disabled children in SA and she, likewise, is donating her time and expertise. We are not a formally organised NGO, and are doing what we can to help at a level where it really matters.

Your help will be greatly appreciated!

Tuesday September 8, 2009, 9:49 am
I see I've left an unfinished sentence up there: what I meant to say was that a petition could also call on the Indian government to allocate special funds for the 'broken' children (as Dr Smit calls them), since Dr Smit & the Baba Farid Centre for Special Children that called on Dr Smit to assess the children their usual therapies do not have any special funding to be able to deal with all the conditions caused by uranium poisoning.

Wednesday September 9, 2009, 1:44 am
one last try --- ...since Dr Smit & the Baba Farid Centre for Special Children (that called on Dr Smit to assess 300 children because their usual therapies were having little effect on this particular group) do not have any special funding to be able to deal with all the conditions caused by uranium poisoning.

Wednesday September 9, 2009, 2:34 am
This is not the only tragedy that has been visited on the people of Punjab.

This region, India's granary, has been the scene of a FARMERS' SUICIDE EPIDEMIC since 1997, because of Monsanto's entry into Indian agriculture & the Indian government's promoting of GM seeds and monoculture, 'cash crops,' particularly Bt Cotton.

The figures are staggering: over 160,000 suicides !!

Vandana Shiva has been monitoring the situation, trying to combat Indian govt support of GM seeds, and trying to convince farmers to use natural seeds and organic farming: "There are alternatives to Bt-cotton and toxic pesticides. "Through Navdanya (Shiva's research foundation for environmental activism, cum biodiversity conservation programme, seed bank & organic farm), we have promoted ‘Organic Farming and Seeds of Hope’, to help farmers move away from Monsanto’s “Seeds of Suicide”. Organic farmers in Vidharbha are earning Rs. 6287 per acre on average, compared to Bt-cotton farmers who are earning Rs. 714 per acre on average. Many Bt-cotton farmers have a negative income, hence the suicides."

SEED MONOPOLIES, GENETIC ENGINEERING
AND FARMERS SUICIDES

Vandana Shiva
15 Nov 08

An epidemic of farmers’ suicides has spread across four states of India over the last decade. According to official data, more than 160,000 farmers have committed suicide in India since 1997.

These four states are Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Punjab. The suicides are most frequent where farmers grow cotton and have been a direct result of the creation of seed monopolies. According to official data, more than 160,000 farmers have committed suicide in India since 1997.

Increasingly, the supply of cotton seeds has slipped out of the hands of the farmers and the public system, into the hands of global seed corporations like Monsanto. The entry of seed MNCs was part of the globalization process.

Corporate seed supply implies a number of shifts simultaneously. Firstly, giant corporations start to control local seed companies through buyouts, joint ventures and licensing arrangements, leading to a seed monopoly.

Secondly, seed is transformed from being a common good, to being the “intellectual property” of Monsanto, for which the corporation can claim limitless profits through royalty payments. For the farmer this means deeper debt.

Thirdly, seed is transformed from a renewable regenerative, multiplicative resource into a non-renewable resource and commodity. Seed scarcity and seed farmers are a consequence of seed monopolies, which are based on renewability of seed, beginning with hybrids, moving to genetically engineered seed like Btcotton,
with the ultimate aim of the “terminator” seed which is engineered for sterility. Each of these technologies of non-renewability is guided by one factor alone – forcing farmers to buy seed every planning season. For farmers this means higher costs.

(this report continues; use the link for the full report)

Wednesday September 9, 2009, 5:54 am
Monsanto's Bt Cotton Kills the Soil as Well as Farmers

..."in a decade of planting with GM cotton, or any GM crop with Bt genes in it, could lead to total destruction of soil organisms, leaving dead soil unable to produce food."

LINK: http://www.i-sis.org.uk/BtCottonKillsSoilandFarmers.php
_____

Chickens Not Fooled by GM Crops

LINK: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/09/05/Chickens-Not-Fooled-by-GM-Crops.aspx
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