Nuclear weapons testing caused millions of premature deaths worldwide, with lasting health effects still felt today, new report says
Geneva: Nuclear weapons testing has affected every single human being on the planet, leading to at least four million premature deaths from cancer and other diseases over time, according to a new report shedding light on the deadly legacy of nuclear weapons testing.
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Of the nine countries known to possess nuclear weapons – Russia, the United States, China, France, the United Kingdom, Pakistan, India, Israel and North Korea – only Pyongyang has conducted nuclear tests since the 1990s.
But a new report from the Norwegian People’s Aid (NPA) humanitarian organization, provided exclusively to AFP, shows how the effects of past tests are still being felt around the world.
“They poisoned us,” said Tahiti MP Hinamoera Cross, 37, who was seven years old when France conducted its last nuclear explosion near her home in French Polynesia in 1996.
Seventeen years later, she was diagnosed with leukemia, coming from a family where her grandmother, mother, and aunt had already suffered from thyroid cancer.
It is known that eruptions have caused lasting and widespread damage to human health, society and ecosystems.
But the NPA report details over 304 pages how an ongoing culture of secrecy, as well as a lack of international engagement and lack of data, has left many affected communities struggling for answers.
“Deaths from past nuclear tests continue today,” NPA chief Raymond Johansson said. He expressed hope that the report would “strengthen resolve to prevent the testing or re-use of nuclear weapons”.
‘Very dangerous’
The issue has gained new relevance after US President Donald Trump suggested last November that Washington could resume nuclear testing, accusing Russia and China of already doing so – charges he rejected.
“This is very, very, very dangerous,” warned Ivana Hughes, a chemistry lecturer at Columbia University and head of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, who contributed to the NPA report.
“The duration of nuclear testing shows us that the consequences are extremely long-lasting and very serious,” he told AFP.
The heaviest burden of past tests has fallen on communities living near the test sites, which today are located in 15 different countries, including many former colonies of nuclear-armed states.
Survivors there face high rates of disease, congenital anomalies, and trauma.
Its impact has also been felt globally.
“There are radioactive isotopes from atmospheric testing in the bones of every person alive today,” Magdalena Stachowski, a professor of anthropology at the University of South Carolina and co-author of the report, told AFP.
millions of early deaths
Hundreds of thousands of people around the world have already died from diseases linked to past nuclear test explosions, the report said.
It pointed to strong scientific evidence linking DNA damage, cancer, heart disease and genetic effects to radiation exposure even at low doses.
“The risks from radiation are actually much greater than previously thought,” report co-author Tilman Ruff told AFP.
Atmospheric tests alone, conducted until 1980, are expected to cause at least two million additional cancer deaths over time, he said.
“The same number of excess early deaths from heart attacks and strokes will (hopefully) occur,” said Ruff, a public health fellow at the University of Melbourne and co-founder of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, which won the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize.
Ionizing radiation, or particles that can break DNA bonds in cells and turn them cancerous, is “highly biologically harmful,” he said.
“There is no level below which there is no effect”.
The risks are not uniform, with fetuses and young children most affected, and girls and women being 52 percent more sensitive to the cancer-inducing effects of radiation than boys and men.
culture of secrecy
The NPA report documented a persistent culture of secrecy among states that test nuclear weapons.
For example, in Kiribati, studies conducted by Britain and the United States on health and environmental impacts remain classified, preventing victims from knowing what was done to them.
And in Algeria, the exact locations where France buried radioactive waste after its tests have not been disclosed, the report said.
None of the nuclear-armed nations have ever apologized for the tests, and even in cases where they eventually acknowledged damage, the report said compensation schemes “serve more to limit liability than to help victims in good faith”.
Meanwhile, local communities often lack adequate health care and health screenings, as well as basic risk education – leaving people unaware of the dangers or how to protect themselves.
“The damage is underestimated, underreported, and under-observed,” Stokowski said.
‘Guinea pigs’
When Cross was diagnosed with leukemia at age 24, he didn’t immediately blame it on the nuclear explosions that occurred in French Polynesia decades earlier.
“France’s propaganda was very powerful,” he told AFP, adding that in school he had only learned about the positive economic impact of the tests on France’s South Pacific islands and atolls.
He was later “surprised” to learn that instead of a handful of harmless “tests”, France conducted 193 explosions in French Polynesia between 1966 and 1996.
The largest bomb was about 200 times more powerful than the one dropped by the United States on Hiroshima in 1945.
“These were not just tests. They were real bombs,” he said, alleging that his people had been treated like “guinea pigs” for decades.
‘trauma’
Other communities near testing sites have also been heavily burdened.
Hughes pointed to the impact of the United States’ 15-megaton Bravo test at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands on 1 March 1954 – “equivalent to 1,000 Hiroshima bombs – an absolute monstrosity”.
It vaporized an island and exposed thousands of people nearby to radioactive fallout.
Rongelap, about 120 kilometers (75 miles) from Bikini, saw vaporized coral atolls mixed with radioactive isotopes falling from the sky onto the island, Hughes said, with children thinking it was snow.
The report criticized the “minimal” international response to the problem.
It particularly highlighted the responsibility of nuclear-armed States to assess needs, assist victims, and enhance efforts to clean up the contaminated environment.
“We want to understand what happened to us,” Cross said.
“We want to recover from this trauma.”
