France confronted with nuclear link to Pacific cancer

PARIS - The French government has been confronted with scientific evidence for the first time that its nuclear tests in the Pacific did cause an increase in cancer on the nearest inhabited islands.

A survey conducted by an official French medical research body has found a "small but clear" increase in the incidence of thyroid cancer amongst people living within 1609 kilometres of nuclear tests on French-owned Polynesian atolls between 1969 and 1996.

The results - which have yet to be officially published - are likely to bring a flurry of compensation claims from civilians and former French military personnel involved in the tests.

They will also re-open the controversy in the Pacific - and in Australia and New Zealand - surrounding President Jacques Chirac's decision to resume the tests soon after he became president in 1995.

France has since abandoned all experimental nuclear explosions.

Florent de Vathaire, an expert on cancer epidemics at the French medical research body Inserm, said: "We can confirm that we have established a link between the fall-out from French nuclear tests and an increased risk of cancer of the thyroid."

This follows the study of 239 thyroid cancer cases in the region which occurred up to 1999 - three years after the last French test.

Only about ten cancer cases over 30 years can be attributed directly to the tests, M. de Vathaire said, but this is a "significant" figure and enough to justify further research.

He called on the French defence ministry to finance additional studies, including examination of military personnel who worked on the nuclear programme in the Pacific.

The detailed results of M. de Vathaire's study will be published shortly in a scientific journal but the main findings have been released in advance to fulfil a promise that the people of the French-owned Polynesian islands would be the first to be informed.

Officially, France has never recognised that its Pacific nuclear tests could place the health of its own Polynesian citizens - and other populations in the Pacific - at risk.

The brief resumption of tests at Mururoa atoll in 1996 was justified on the grounds that there was no possible threat to human health.

A pressure group for military personnel involved in the tests said that the team's findings should force a change in French official attitudes.

The Association des Veterans des Essais Nucleaires said: "France is one of the last countries in the world to admit that nuclear tests were dangerous to health.

"The United States has recognised by law since 1988 that 31 kinds of illness, including 25 kinds of cancer, can be provoked amongst people living within 700 kilometres of point zero (the explosion site)."

The ministry of defence in Paris refused to comment on the findings until they are officially published.

France conducted 210 nuclear tests between 13 February 1960 and 27 July 1996. The first 17 explosions, in the period up to 1966, were detonated in North Africa, four in the atmosphere and 13 underground.

Between 1966 and 1996, France conducted 193 tests at Mururoa and Fangataufa atolls in the Pacific (46 in the atmosphere and 147 underground).

France has already been forced to admit that some of these explosion caused dangerous levels of radiation in the nearest inhabited islands.

After two tests within 17 days in 1966, radiation at five times the permitted annual dose was measured on the Gambier islands.

After three tests in 1974, radiation equivalent to the entire permitted annual dose was measured in Tahiti.

- INDEPENDENT