In order to counter the safety and health allegations being levied by agitating communities of farmers and fishermen in Koodankulam in Tamil Nadu and Jaitapur in Maharashtra, the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL) has launched a major offensive to highlight that their own employees working across 29 nuclear installation suffer from fewer diseases including cancer as compared to the general public.
Regular and not contract employees were subject to these medical tests which also covered a radius of 20 km around the nuclear plant.
A series of studies conducted by Tata Memorial Centre, NPCIL and local hospitals located near each local nuclear power plant have shown that while cancer deaths amongst the public are 98.5 per lakh, cancer cases amongst NPCIL employees are almost half at 54.05 per lakh.
NPCIL employees also suffer from fewer cases of hypertension, diabetes, heart disease and anaemia as compared to the general public according to these epidemiological studies.
Dr K.M. Mohandas, director, Centre for Epidemiology, Tata Memorial Centre, Mumbai, pointed out that while cancer was the fifth leading cause of death in the 30-69-year-old age group in India, the highest number of cancer cases were found in the Northeast where there was no nuclear power plants.
“The high incidence of cancer in the Northeast were caused by the habit of smoking and tobacco chewing,” he said adding that neighbouring countries such as Bangladesh and Nepal reported higher cancer cases even though no nuclear plants were installed in these countries. Dr Mohandas cited the example of a study on 17,700 workers doing uranium mining in Canada, who were tracked over several decades, and were found to be keeping better health than the general Canadian public.
S.A. Bhardwaj, director, technical, NPCIL, pointed out that radiation was present everywhere in nature, including in the food we eat and the water we drink. “Radioactive elements like potassium-40, radium-226 and radium-228 are also naturally present in the human body and eventually make their way into the food chain,” he pointed out.