Officials Seize Tons of Radiated Exports

By Ali Nassor
STAFF WRITER
(From http://www.spb.su/times/165-166/official.html )

The commission for radiation control in St Petersburg and the surrounding
oblast seized more than 7 million tons of imported food products believed to
have been affected by Chernobyl nuclear radiation over the last eight years,
officials said.

Yuri Shukin, the commission president, said Tuesday that the commodities,
amounting to an average of 1.4 tons for every one of St Petersburg 5 million
residents, include 90,000 tons of highly polluted food products meant for
export from Russia.

He said most of the food products, including fruits, vegetables, meat and milk
products seized from trains, seaports, local stores and individuals since 1988,
were either reprocessed to feed animals in zoos and collective farms or used
for experiments.

Shukin told a press conference at the Russian-American Press and Inforamtion
Center that about 40 tons of material, including food and medical products,
could not be reprocessed because of high levels of radiation made them
unusable.

He said the products were being kept at a nuclear-waste storage and treatment
plant near Sosnovy Bor atomic power station, 70 kilometers west of St
Petersburg.

In April, Oleg Bodrov, head of a local non-governmental environmental
organization, Baltic Region-Our Habitat, described the treatment plant where
nuclear wastes from the power station have been stored for more than 20 years
as "near-collapse and threatening about 95 million people throughout the Baltic
region."

Leonid Petrov, head of the St Petersburg Legislative Assembly ecology
committee, said in the past 10 years about 100,000 people from the countries
worst affected by Chernobyl - Belarus, Ukraine and Russia - received special
care in St Petersburg medical centers.

He said while 6,500 of the cases were children, there have been no cases of
children born in the city or oblast who have been affected by radiation
sickness linked to Chernobyl, thanks to the efforts of the radiation control
commission.

Dr. Natalia Kovalova of the St Petersburg Institute of Experimental Medicine
wrote in a report in a Baltic region ecological quarterly that 12 cases of
radiation sickness among children have been discovered in Sosnovy Bor.

However, she linked the cases with an alleged 1975 accident at the nuclear
facility, which is the same type as at Chernobyl.

Anatoly Yepirin, the station's director, said in the same report that the 1975
incident was not serious enough to have caused such effects, implying that the
12 cases were caused by the 1986 Chernobyl explosion.

The St Petersburg commission was founded a month after the Chernobyl explosion
to help protect the area against the spread of radiation caused by the
accident.