Whistleblower, hero, Dr Pritpal Singh runs the Faridkot clinic in the Punjab region of India. He decided that the deaths of these children would be on his hands if he did not speak up. And the numbers of children affected by the toxic coal pollution continued to rise dramatically over the past six or seven years.
India's generation of children crippled by (coal) uranium wasteObserver investigation uncovers link between dramatic rise in birth defects in Punjab and pollution from coal-fired power stations
* Gethin Chamberlain, Bathinda
* The Observer, Sunday 30 August 2009 ...it was only when a visiting scientist arranged for tests to be carried out at a German laboratory that the true nature of their plight became clear. The results were unequivocal. The children had massive levels of uranium in their bodies, in one case more than 60 times the maximum safe limit.
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And if a few hundred children – spread over a large area – were contaminated, how many thousands more might also be affected? Those are questions the Indian authorities appear determined not to answer. Staff at the clinics say they were visited and threatened with closure if they spoke out. The South African scientist whose curiosity exposed the scandal says she has been warned by the authorities that she may not be allowed back into the country.
But an Observer investigation has now uncovered disturbing evidence to suggest a link between the contamination and the region's coal-fired power stations. It is already known that the fine fly ash produced when coal is burned contains concentrated levels of uranium and a new report published by Russia's leading nuclear research institution warns of an increased radiation hazard to people living near coal-fired thermal power stations.
The test results for children born and living in areas around the state's power stations show high levels of uranium in their bodies. Tests on ground water show that levels of uranium around the plants are up to 15 times the World Health Organisation's maximum safe limits. Tests also show that it extends across large parts of the state, which is home to 24 million people.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/aug/30/india-punjab-children-uranium-pollution Think it can't happen here in the USA? Here's an interactive map showing regions of unsafely high Mercury levels from coal power plants:
http://www.marex.uga.edu/mercurymap/map.html... Source page:
http://action.sierraclub.org/site/PageNavigator/stoppolluters_mercury.html