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Muslimova is an agricultural community of 6000 people in the southern
Urals. Compared with the industrial towns of Chelyabinsk to the south and
Yekaterinburg to the north, the air here is clean and the grass green. The
Techa River runs through the village, its waters clear and apparently clean.
But one look at villagers’ medical records reveals that Muslimova has been
the victim of deadly pollution.

For more than four decades, its people have been exposed to radiation
from the Mayak nuclear reprocessing and waste plant just 30 kilometres upriver.
The Mayak plant, initially know as Chelyabinsk-65, opened in 1949 as the
USSR’s main centre for the production of nuclear weapons and immediately
started disgorging a cocktail of radioactive elements into the Techa (see
box, ‘Mayak’s dirty history’). As a result of both deliberate and accidental
releases, water supplies for 124 000 people were contaminated with high
levels of radioactive isotopes, including strontium-90, caesium-137 and
plutonium.

In the late 1950s, villages along the Techa began to be evacuated. But
Muslimova’s railway station was vital to the Mayak plant, so people were
not moved out of the village. Soon, barbed wire fences started to appear
along the river banks, and the authorities dug wells to provide drinking
water. But there was no explanation or warning of danger, and as the well
water was dirty and tasted bad, most people carried on drinking river water.
Meanwhile ill health continued to increase.

Today, villagers are angry. At last they know the cause of their sickness,
and they believe that they should have been evacuated. Furthermore, they
have discovered that for decades their health was being monitored through
regular testing by regional officials from the Institute of Biophysics in
Moscow. Many believe Muslimova was left deliberately as some kind of experiment.
This is a view shared by Gulfarida Galimova, who runs the village clinic.

When Galimova started work in Muslimova in the early 1980s, she was
puzzled to find that most of the women were very anaemic. In addition, almost
10 per cent of babies were born prematurely and many more pregnancies ended
in miscarriages. Before long, Galimova discovered that almost everyone in
Muslimova complained of bad health and that most had several chronic diseases.

Regional hospitals were not allowed to treat the villagers – on instructions
from the Soviet Health Ministry – so Galimova went to the Chelyabinsk branch
of the Institute of Biophysics, where villagers were sent for specialist
treatment. There consultants told her that poor diet was the cause of the
villagers’ ill health. But they would not let her see their records, and
not until almost a decade later, with the arrival of glasnost, did the truth
begin to emerge.

Medical data at the institute, now renamed the Urals Centre for Radiation
Medicine, were declassified in 1990. Mira Kosenko, who joined the institute
in 1967 and is now head of its clinical department, describes how she had
to sign a declaration never to speak about her work. Until 1990, when she
was released from that undertaking, Kosenko told her patients they were
suffering from ‘slimming vegetative syndrome’. Throughout this period,
she and her colleagues were compiling detailed medical records showing the
effects of long-term radiation exposure on the people of the area.

According to official figures based on measurements taken at the time
but not made public until a few years ago, the population of Muslimova received
radiation doses of 240 millisieverts (mSv) between 1950 and 1951. Dumping
of high-level radioactive waste straight into the Techa was stopped soon
afterwards but low-level discharges continued until 1956. Over this period,
villagers received an average dose of 350 mSv, and thousands received doses
of 3500 mSv, according to Kosenko. In Britain, the National Radiological
Protection Board recommends that no one in the general population should
receive a dose of more than 1 mSv per year. The river water is now clean,
but radiation levels in silt and on some surrounding agricultural land remain
high. People living in Muslimova are still estimated to receive a dose of
280 mSv in the course of a lifetime.

Deadly exposure

In the basement of the Urals Centre for Radiation Medicine, records
dating from the early 1950s chart the decline in health of 28 000 people
living along the Techa. All of them are classed as ‘seriously irradiated’,
and over the past 32 years they have been examined regularly by public health
officials. The data include the results of whole body monitoring as well
as information about strontium levels in teeth, internal radiation doses
and illnesses. More than 8000 have died as a result of radiation exposure,
according to a report known as the ‘Blue Book’, which was compiled in 1992
by the Institute of Biophysics for the Russian Health Ministry. A further
935 are diagnosed as suffering from chronic radiation disease, also known
as ‘radiation AIDS’ because the symptoms are all attributable to severely
impaired immunity.

Kosenko says she has noticed what she estimates to be a doubling in
the rate of leukaemia since she began work at the centre. The leukaemia
rate among people in the area exposed to radiation is 6.4 per 100 000 each
year, compared with 3.6 per 100 000 in the general population. Kosenko has
also seen a recent rise in the number of people dying of cancer – in particular,
cancers of the digestive system, skin, bones and lungs. Skin cancers have
increased fourfold over the past 33 years. According to data from the Blue
Book, there was a significant increase in all types of illness among the
population of the Techa region between 1980 and 1990. This includes a 21
per cent rise in cancers and a 31 per cent rise in vascular disease, while
birth defects are up about a quarter.

The burden of ill health is enormous in Muslimova. ‘People of 25 suffer
from chronic fatigue and memory lapses,’ says Galimova. ‘No one can work
properly. In other villages people have their own businesses. In Muslimova
only people who have come from other areas do so. Many people are like zombies.’
Kosenko recently carried out a small epidemiological study of 100 people
selected at random. It showed 96 per cent to have at least five chronic
diseases such as heart disease, high blood pressure, arthritis and asthma,
and 30 per cent with ten. ‘Even losing a tooth can cause profuse bleeding
in children,’ she says.

Galimova estimates that half the women of child-bearing age are sterile,
as are half of all men, and one-third of the babies born have some physical
disorder or defect. She advises women not to have children unless they first
have genetic tests. Preliminary research has shown a high level of DNA mutations
among Muslimova’s population, and more studies are planned for this year.
Last year, Nina Soloviyanov a doctor at the Institute of Cytology and Genetics
in Novosibirsk, conducted tests on 20 relatively healthy people from Muslimova
selected at random. In nine of them, aberrations involving chromosome changes
consistent with radiation damage could be seen in 3 per cent of their cells.
The normal level for such aberrations in healthy cells is 1 in 800 or 1000,
or about 0.1 per cent.

While many experts are sceptical that radiation damage to an adult
can affect their unborn offspring, the findings in Muslimova come as no
surprise to Eric Wright of the Medical Research Council’s Radiobiology Unit
at Harwell in Oxfordshire. ‘This is exactly what our experiments are beginning
to predict,’ he says. ‘Research at the unit has shown that alpha emitters
such as plutonium not only kill cells but can cause them to become unstable
so that the damage only becomes apparent when they have divided several
times.’ The effects of damage would then be delayed and depend on the type
of cell involved, explains Wright. This delayed response is not seen with
X-rays or gamma rays.

Studies of mice at Wright’s unit suggest that different types of radiation
have different effects, and that the effects of long-term radiation may
be impossible to predict from results of exposure to a single high dose.
Wright notes that the effects of a cocktail of different types of radiation
may be even more complex. This view is echoed by Keith Baverstock, a radiation
scientist at the WHO’s European Centre for Environment and Health in Rome.
‘We do not know what to expect from these very significant doses prolonged
over a considerable period,’ he says.

Werner Burkart, a radiation biologist at the Institute for Radiation
Hygiene in Munich, has conducted some preliminary research in the Chelyabinsk
region. Last year, using special equipment to measure strontium-90, he investigated
700 people from the Techa area. ‘The average dose of the Techa cohort is
higher than the individual doses received by atomic bomb survivors,’ he
says. ‘It is so high you are bound to find health effects if you do a proper
epidemiological study.’

Moreover, Burkart points out that people from the Techa area were also
exposed to a chronic doses of radiation which cannot be compared to survivors
of Hiroshima or Nagasaki. ‘Chronic radiation disease is not known in the
West,’ he explains. ‘It is a unique kind of disease which involves wasting
of the blood-forming organs.’ Albrecht Kellerer, head of the Radiobiology
Institute of Munich University, agrees. ‘These people have experienced continuous
exposure on a much higher level than elsewhere,’ he says. Kellerer and Burkart
are preparing a survey of all the scientific studies conducted by Russian
researchers in this region over the past three decades. Much of this work
has been secret until now.

Later this year, 16 such studies, edited by Burkart and Kellerer, will
be published in The Journal of the Total Environment. One of these was
undertaken by Nadezhda Okladnikova and her colleagues at the Institute of
Biophysics in Chelyabinsk. In 1990, they made a detailed study of the medical
records of more than 1500 patients with chronic radiation disease, who had
been monitored from 1952 to 1989. Concentrating on changes in blood cells
and in the neurological system, the team revealed a dramatic fall in all
types of white blood cell – which play the major role in immune response.
They also found changes in the central nervous system, including disintegration
of the insulating myelin sheaths and wasting because of reduced blood supply,
particularly in the brain.

Despite the evidence of the effects of contamination at Muslimova, Russian
government officials have no plans to evacuate the town. According to Yuri
Tsaturov, deputy chairman of the State Committee for the Social Protection
of the Population from Chernobyl and Other Radiation Disasters, radiation
levels at Muslimova are now ‘normal’. But villagers who do not accept the
government line are starting to find their own voice.

Gusman Kabirov of the local environmental group, Movement for Nuclear
Safety, points out that official measurements are made in the streets which
have been covered with tarmac. He has taken his own measurements in his
father’s garden, and they show at least twice the maximum permitted level
of radiation. Kabirov’s Geiger counter was donated by a sympathetic environmental
group called Chernobyl Union. ‘We have not been told the truth, and it is
important that we monitor radiation levels for ourselves,’ he says.

Contaminated cattle

Officially, levels of caesium-137 in the waters of the Techa are normal.
But Kabirov claims he has taken measurements on the banks which show radiation
levels thousands of times the permitted maximum. Kellerer, too, has obtained
readings from near the Techa which show levels 50 times normal. Furthermore,
the experts agree that the river bed and flood plains are probably heavily
polluted with plutonium, the main product of the Mayak plant in the 1950s.
But Kabirov does not have the specialist equipment needed to measure radiation
from alpha emitters such as plutonium, and there are no official figures.

Lack of money is preventing Kabirov continuing his research. Because
Muslimova is an agricultural community, he believes it is vital to discover
which areas are clean and which are contaminated. At present, cattle often
wander from common grazing land into contaminated areas where the grass
is lusher. ‘People do not have time to clean them before milking. And fodder
is brought from contaminated areas for the cattle to eat’, says Kabirov.
He is calling for food products to be monitored so that people know which
land is safe to cultivate. ‘We need a grant from some organisation to continue
our work,’ says Kabirov.

Like many villagers, Kabirov is on the verge of despair at the deteriorating
situation in Muslimova. As the authority of the state has crumbled, fences
along the river broke down and animals began straying into the water. At
the local clinic, Galimova feels she is fighting a losing battle. ‘This
town needs at least eight doctors to cope with the problems here. But I
have to manage alone. No one else comes and we don’t even have enough medicines.
The authorities don’t care. They have decided that these people have no
future. It’s like working in a cemetery.’ But despite this pessimism, Galimova
continues her campaign to bring the plight of Muslimova to a wider audience.

‘This is too big a problem for a single nation to tackle,’ says Baverstock.
‘A collective effort is needed to set up a proper arrangement for monitoring
health today and assessing past exposure and health effects.’ Baverstock
believes that the WHO, despite its limited resources and manpower, is in
a position to persuade governments to contribute funds. ‘We have a global
responsibility to help these people,’ agrees Burkart. ‘But we must also
try to learn all we can from this unique experience and hope that it will
never happen again.

Judith Perera is a freelance writer specialising in science in the former
Soviet Union.

* * *

Mayak’s dirty history

The Soviet Union started work on its nuclear bomb in 1948. Within a
year, weapons grade plutonium was being produced at six nuclear reactors
at Chelyabinsk-65 in the Urals – now known as the Mayak Manufacturing Association.
The reactors were cooled with water from the nearby Lake Kyzyltash, and
nuclear waste from the plant flowed straight into the Techa River, which
runs through the site.

Two years later, people living downstream started to fall ill. Officials
decided to divert the waste into two self-contained natural lakes near the
plant – Lake Karachai for high-level waste and Lake Staroe Boloto for medium-level
waste. From 1953, high-level waste was kept in special storage tanks, but
medium-level waste continued to flow into the two lakes. Radioactive discharges
into the Techa did not cease entirely until 1956.

By this time, the river bed near the plant had become severely contaminated.
So, to prevent further radioactivity escaping downstream, a series of dams
was built along the river and fresh water flowing into it was diverted through
a system of canals to the north. Behind the dams, large contaminated reservoirs
up to six metres deep built up around the Mayak plant. Despite these efforts,
some radioactivity – mainly plutonium – still seeps into the river from
contaminated marshland.

Karachai is now estimated to contain almost 4.5 times 1018 becquerels
or 4500 million gigabecquerels (GBq) of radioactivity, and Staroe Boloto
around 110 million GBq. (According to official figures, the Chernobyl accident
released around 1750 million GBq.) Total radioactivity in the river is estimated
at 100 million GBq.

Accidents over the years have helped spread the radioactive debris over
the countryside around Mayak. On 29 September 1957, a tank containing 360
000 litres of high-level waste exploded after its cooling system failed.
Around 750 million GBq of radioactivity escaped.

Ten years later, Lake Karachai dried up during the long hot summer,
allowing radioactive dust from the exposed lake bottom to be blown over
an area of 2200 square kilometres. More than 22 GBq fell in an area populated
by 41 000 people. Work is now under way to cover the lake with gravel and
rocks to prevent a repetition of the accident.

The plant remains prone to accidents. The most recent was a chemical
explosion last July, during the production of plutonium-238 for export to
the US.

* * *

Russia’s radioactive golden goose

For the past decade, Mayak has been undergoing a process of conversion
from military to primarily civilian operation. All six of the old reactors
that produced weapons grade plutonium have been closed down. Its main function
now is as a waste storage and reprocessing plant for fuel from nuclear
power reactors. A lucrative sideline is the production in two small heavy-water
reactors of various radioactive isotopes for industrial and medical use,
which are made from the by-products of reprocessing.

Isotopes have been produced at Mayak for over 30 years, but until recently
less than 5 per cent were exported. Now over half its output goes abroad.
In Britain, for instance, Amersham International buys six isotopes from
Mayak and is planning to expand the range by adding a few more each year.
Mayak’s products tend to be cheaper than those of alternative producers,
and international demand for them is growing.

In addition, Mayak reprocesses spent fuel. Most of it arrives by train
from Soviet-built nuclear submarines and VVER-440 reactors. The bulk of
it is returned after reprocessing, although some weapons grade material
is stored on site. Over 30 000 million gigabecquerels of high-level liquid
waste is stored in steel tanks at Mayak. This year, a vitrification plant
came into service, converting liquid waste into a more manageable glass-like
solid.

The commercially valuable by-products from reprocessing include plutonium-238,
which is used in the US to power spacecraft. Last year, the Department of
Energy signed a contract with Mayak worth $57.3 million for the supply
of 40 kilograms of the isotope over five years. The first assignment of
5 kilograms – worth around $6 million – was dispatched last March. It was
transported to the US by air in special steel containers.

The US has allocated $800 million to the task of recovering plutonium
and other materials from old Soviet nuclear warheads that are being dismantled
under disarmament treaties, and to establish a storage facility for these
materials. Mayak may well get the business.

Furthermore, Russian warheads which were to be dismantled at Tomsk in
Siberia may now go to Mayak, following an accident at Tomsk last April.
And last year the UN selected Mayak to reprocess fuel confiscated from
Iraq.

There are even plans to build three BN-800 fast breeder reactors at
Mayak to produce electricity and burn up some of the accumulated high-level
wastes. Construction began in the early 1980s, but was stopped after the
Chernobyl accident. Despite a local referendum last year in which 70 per
cent voted against the reactors, the local authorities have given the go-ahead
for construction to continue following an environmental assessment.