Interview with Dr Chris Busby

Dr Chris Busby who is trained as a physical chemist, outlines in his book "Wings of Death" evidence that radioactive fallout from atomic weapons was the main cause of changes in rates ofinfant mortality in the sixties and the increases in cancer and other illness, especially in areas of high rainfall. He has helped in starting The Low Level Radiation Campaign which opposes the Euratom directive - and is also engaged in the efforts to repeal the original Euratom Treaty of 1957.

Busby: Hidden in the text of the directive are clauses which actually mean a dramatic fall in standards and a flood of radioactive materials into landfills and incinerators - waste can even be recycled into consumer goods! Below certain levels of radioactivity, companies won't even have to state that it is nuclear waste that they are selling - it will be up to the buyer to find out. Manufacturers simply won't know if the metal, plastic or glass they are making into consumer products contains radioactive substances.

Busby: Evidence of the danger comes from a series of cancer clusters around nuclear installations, which routinely emit low-level radiation. In the last two years alone, there have been four seperate studies showing severe health effects. The incidence of cases of leukaemia in children living within five kilometres of the Krummel nuclear installation in Schleswig-Holstein in Germany for instance is much higher than for Germany as a whole. After eliminating other factors, the scientists have concluded that this can only be explained in terms of geographical proximity. Soil samples taken near the Krummel plant containing raised levels of strontium-90 and caesium-137 confirm this conclusion. The leukaemia levels in adults are also raised. New research on cancer incidence in wales shows a remarkable effect - living near the sea is associated with a much higher risk of cancer. The statistical strength of this study is very great, since it is based on a huge population. The only tenable conclusion is that it is the radioactivity in the irish sea that is to blame.

According to official risk factors radiation doses are too small to account for these findings - but the risk factors are based on guesswork, and there is a great deal of evidence that they are wrong. We can actually calculate the size of the error from the doses Chernobyl caused to unborn babies in Wales and Scotland, and the increase in infant leukaemia that group of children suffered as a result. The entire paper can be seen on our website at www.llrc.org/infant_leukkaemia_post_chernobyl.htm

Busby: First of all it supposes that external radiation - and internal radiation - affects health the same way: it's the same as claiming that you will receive the same amount of energy if you sit for an hour in front of an open fireplace - as if you were to reach out for a burning coal and swallow it. Obviously there's a lot of difference! Next it is based on old results from the Hiroshima study which could not reveal the real results of internal contamination - since both the study group of victims who were outdoors near the explosion, as well as the control group (also from Hiroshima) which should represent the healthy average, lived in the same radioactive environment: eating, drinking and breathing radioactive fallout. Finally the Euratom directive claims that below a certain level, industrial radiation is not worse than natural background radiation. But natural radiation is easily excreted and the human body have had millions of years to develop genetic defences to survive this - industrial isotopes have only been around for the last 50 years: these isotopes are bioactive - our organism mistakes these for useful substances, strontium as an example replaces calcium and is concentrated in our skeleton causing bone cancer - and in DNA where its double decay pathway has a high chance of causing mutations.

Busby: A plutonium particle is very small indeed - quite a few would fit inside a single cell in your body. They are microscopic and may stay suspended in the air or be inhaled. On the other hand the directive allows contaminated waste to be dumped or reused anywhere - with nothing to stop it containing hot particles of plutoniumoxide strong enough to irradiate for instance your surrounding lung-tissue with 500 rads - which even according to the Hiroshima studies is half the killing dose. So it's very dangerous - and there is lots of it around! Low level waste is the most common and bulky category of waste and includes maschinery, concrete, plastic, glass etc. It is reliably estimated that in the next decades 30 million tonnes of metals alone will be disposed of from nuclear plants in Europe - some or even most of it will be radioactive - and there are all sorts of other even more bulky leftovers from the nuclear industry. The significance of the directive goes a lot further than just "harmonisation"...

- More information about this can be found on the web at: www.llrc.org/

Chris Busby may be contacted at: Low Level Radiation Campaign, Ammondale, Spa Road - Llandrindod, Powys LD1 5EY UK. Email: [email protected]

References

Liquid discharges from European reprocessing facilities" (Maj �97) fr�n Greenpeace International.

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Swedish