After six weeks of investigation and deliberation, the panel of inquiry
appointed by the European Space Agency to investigate the accident delivered its
verdict in Paris this week.

As expected, the board blamed the inertial reference system, which controls
the rocket’s trajectory. This keeps the launcher upright during liftoff, then,
as the flight progresses, it gradually angles the engine nozzles to adjust the
rocket’s course to reach the right orbit.

Ariane 5’s inertial reference system is the same as the one used on Ariane 4,
and it had worked flawlessly many times on the older rocket. But Ariane 5 weighs
nearly twice as much as its predecessor and the three main engines generate more
than twice as much thrust. So the rocket climbs quicker and its flight path is
different.

Although the inertial reference system was tested before 4 June on a
turntable that provided an acceleration of 7g, many times the
acceleration acting on it during the opening seconds of the flight, the tests
failed to take account of the difference in horizontal velocity of the two
rockets. An Ariane 4 rocket travels vertically during the initial stages of a
flight, but the flightpath of Ariane 5 strays from the vertical much sooner.

“On the turntable the mean horizontal velocity over time is zero but during
the actual flight it builds up quickly,” says Colin O’Halloran of Britain’s
Defence Research Agency in Malvern, a member of the inquiry team. Tests
conducted after the disaster have confirmed that the inertial reference system
would fail when the real figures for changes in horizontal velocity are
used.

Although the design flaw in the inertial reference system’s software is easy
to fix, the bigger problem is ensuring that a similar fault never happens again.
“The review and qualification procedures need to be tightened,” says
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These changes are not going to come cheap. ESA believes it could cost up to 4
per cent of the £5.3 billion Ariane 5 budget to improve the review
procedures.

“Only in the course of the coming weeks will we be able to finalise the
actions that must be taken and be able to assess the financial consequences,”
says Jean-Marie Luton, director-general of ESA.

MAGISTRATES investigating the activities of Jacques Crozemarie, the
former president of the Association for Cancer Research (ARC), were last week
handed more than a thousand new documents relating to his role in the financial
scandal that has rocked the French charity. Crozemarie was arrested last month
and is still in custody.

In January, Crozemarie was forced to resign as head of the ARC, one of the
country’s leading medical charities, after an audit revealed that only 27 per
cent of its 1993 budget was spent on research (This Week, 20 January, p 8).

The new documents were provided by Jean Montaldo, author of a book about the
scandal called The Cancer Gang. Montaldo obtained them from an
accountant who claims to have operated a system of double billing for a company
linked to the ARC.

Crozemarie was arrested on 26 June after being investigated for alleged
“breach of trust, forgery, use of forged documents and collusion”. He suffered a
mild heart attack shortly afterwards and was taken to hospital. Since then he
has not been questioned by Jean-Pierre Zanoto, the Paris magistrate who is
leading the inquiry into the allegations. Last week Zanoto confirmed that
Crozemarie must remain under arrest. He is expected to answer questions as soon
as his health permits.

Zanoto’s investigators say they already have evidence of at least 80 million
francs (£10 million) in overbilling by International Development, a group
of companies that managed ARC’s publications. According to the French newspaper
Libération, the investigators say that most of the money was
spent on services that had no connection with cancer research. Michel Simon, the
head of International Development, was arrested shortly after Crozemarie.

AFTER lagging behind other industrialised countries in dealing with the
health threat of asbestos, France has banned almost all production and new use
of the substance from January 1997. In Britain, white asbestos—the least
dangerous of the three forms of the material—can still be used.

The French ban was announced just a day after the release of a report from
INSERM, the national medical research agency, which predicts that at least 1950
people will die this year in France as a result of past exposure to asbestos.
About 750 of the deaths will be from mesothelioma, a cancer of the lung lining,
and the other 1200 from lung cancer. “Practically all the cases are
work-related,” says Marcel Goldberg, an INSERM epidemiologist and a coauthor of
the report.

The French study confirms the findings of British researchers, who last year
found that death rates from asbestos exposure are highest among building
workers
(This Week, 11 March 1995, p 4). According to both surveys, construction
workers
account for a quarter of all mesothelioma deaths. But Julian Peto of the
Institute of Cancer Research in Sutton, who led the British study, says
that the
real figure is probably higher. “The data come from death certificates, which
only indicate a person’s last full-time occupation,” he says. “If a man worked
in construction when he was young and then changed jobs, his exposure to
asbestos could go unrecorded.”

In the 1970s, death rates were highest among factory workers producing
asbestos products. But since exposure to the carcinogenic asbestos fibres in
this industry has been controlled, the incidence of mesothelioma has been
highest among gas fitters, followed by welders, plumbers, carpenters and
electricians. Many workers are unaware that they are being exposed, says
Goldberg.

Goldberg admits that he was surprised the French government moved so
quickly to ban asbestos production. “This is probably the first and last
time in
my life that a report I write will have such an immediate impact,” he says. But
while Goldberg applauds the ban on new asbestos production, the question
of what
to do about buildings already containing the material has still to be answered,
he says. INSERM warns against the indiscriminate removal of asbestos, which
could expose people to even higher concentrations than before.

The French government will allow asbestos in firefighters’ protective
clothing and brake linings until an alternative is found.

THE popular belief that child malnutrition is worst in sub-Saharan Africa
is wrong, according to a report from UNICEF. Progress of Nations 1996
states that 50 per cent of South Asian children are undernourished, compared to
30 per cent in Africa. The countries of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh alone
account for almost half of child malnutrition worldwide.

“In India, 53 per cent of all under-fives show [growth] faltering by the
criterion of weight for age,” says Vulimiri Ramalingaswami, former director of
the Indian Council of Medical Research, and one of the report’s authors. The
situation is even worse in Bangladesh, with 67 per cent of children showing
stunted growth.

The main problem in South Asia, according to UNICEF executive director Carol
Bellamy, is not a lack of food in the countries concerned, but the low social
status of women in the region. When women are poorly nourished and denied access
to healthcare, she argues, their children are likely to weigh less and be
sickly. “Girls are taken to the health clinic less often,” says Bellamy. “It
starts a process that affects the individuals for the rest of their lives.”

One-third of the children born in South Asia weigh less than 2.5 kilograms,
the UNICEF report notes. In sub-Saharan Africa, the proportion is one-sixth.
Thereafter, the growth curve of South Asian babies is normal during the first
four months of life, but as breast milk is withdrawn, their growth flattens out.
The region’s predominantly vegetarian diet—filling, but deficient in
calories and protein—may be a contributory factor, according to
UNICEF.

Some leading nutritionists question UNICEF’s conclusions, however. They point
out that the survey lacks figures for a number of African
countries—including Angola, Burundi, Liberia and Somalia—where
malnourishment is known to be a particularly serious problem.

Poor nutrition in sub-Saharan Africa is often associated with war and social
upheaval, says Steve Collins, a visiting research fellow at the Institute of
Child Health in London. “Those events cause a high level of malnutrition, but
it’s difficult to study [in war zones] and get accurate data,” he adds.