RADIOACTIVE fallout from the explosion of the Chernobyl nuclear plant a decade ago may be responsible for a big increase in the number of cancer cases on a remote Scottish island, the Observer newspaper reported yesterday. Nineteen, new cancers have been reported on Benbecula in the Outer Hebrides since late 1994 when the expected number would have been about six.
Doctors on the island, which has a population of some 1,800, suspect the surge is due to people eating home grown food that was contaminated when a radioactive cloud spewed out by the Chernobyl explosion on April 24th, 1986, passed over the Western Isles of Scotland a week later. Heavy rain fell at the time, which increased the chances of contamination on the ground.
"The increase is largely in people who have lived here for 10 years, not in those who arrived more recently," Dr Francis Tierney, a doctor on Benbecula, told the Observer.
The cancers are largely of the digestive tract, with some lung, tumours. In one small township, four people with cancer live within a few doors of each other.
"The Chernobyl hypothesis is just one of many ... but it is a question worth asking. What I would like to see is someone coming in and looking to see if it is a real increase and if it is more so than in other areas," De Tierney said.
The explosion at Chernobyl, 60 miles from the Ukrainian capital Kiev, was the world's worst nuclear accident.