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Hair samples of disabled children contains Uranium and other dangerous heavy metals BATHINDA: The high level of Uranium and other dangerous heavy metals present in water samples from the region is responsible for retarded children, mainly from southern Malwa region. It is crippling children's brain. This was confirmed by Germany's Microtrace Mineral Lab which revealed that hair samples taken from 80% of the neurologically disabled children, and thier drinking water contains high levels of uranium, a radioactive element. The report also confirms the presence of dangerous heavy metals in water, questioning high use of chemicals to support state's green revolution. The possible source of uranium is the depleted uranium used by US nuclear warheads that were deployed in its war against Iraq. There were high level of uranium in the drinking water sources and nearly all kinds of heavy metals in the hair samples of 149 children and a few adults at the Baba Farid Centre for Special Children in Faridkot, confirms the report.

The Dutch Foreign Affairs Ministry has announced that it has reached agreement with the Belarussian authorities on the continuation of the free visits to the Netherlands of children suffering health problems from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster 23 years ago today. The first group will arrive in the Netherlands next week, in time to celebrate Queen's Day on 30 April. In October, Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko ruled that only children with cancer would be allowed to leave the country. The Belarus authorities reportedly feared the children would apply for asylum. Three private organisations fund trips for children from the Chernobyl region; over the years thousands of children have visited host families in the Netherlands.

"Traces of uranium have been found in a large number of autistic children in India's northern state of Punjab. The metal, used for generating nuclear energy and to make nuclear bombs, is thought to be the reason behind their autism. Five-and-a-half-year-old Dashamveer Singh was born premature. It was one of the reasons behind his slow mental development. He is being treated at Baba Farid Centre For Special Children. "A normal kid would be active. He would start sitting up by six months of age and start reacting. My child did no such thing. After one year, he could neither sit nor stand. So, we sought treatment for him at the centre," said Satvinder Kaur, mother of Dashamvee. There are many children at the centre with similar symptoms - most of them are from a small town in India's northern state of Punjab. "

A study has been launched in Switzerland to investigate whether children living near nuclear reactors have a higher risk of cancer. The study - Childhood Cancer and Nuclear Power Plants in Switzerland - follows an analysis by German scientists last year that found a possible link between higher rates of leukaemia in children who live near nuclear power plants. Researchers will study cancer rates among Swiss minors born between 1985 and 2007. It will compare the data against the distances the children lived from reactors when and before they became ill.

In the wan light of a snowy spring morning, belongings scattered on the floor of an abandoned kindergarten speak of a time before the children of Pripyat lost their innocence. Musty sandals and ballet slippers for tiny feet. Cardboard pictures of Lenin as a young boy and as a youthful leader-the Soviet equivalent of baseball cards. In the next room, dolls in various states of dress and dismemberment, lolling on metal cots where the children once napped. Finally, on the gymnasium wall, photos of the children themselves-doing calisthenics, climbing monkey bars, balancing on boards.

Children affected by the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster have resumed respite trips to the UK after the resolution of a long diplomatic row with Belarus. The eight-month ban was lifted in May following talks between the two countries, the Home Office has said. Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko stopped all foreign trips after a 16-year-old girl who visited California refused to return home. Every year hundreds of children around Chernobyl are diagnosed with cancer.

Big heads, bulging eyes, twisted hands that don't reach their mouths and bent legs that can barely support their frail frames. Intrigued by these abnormalities among children in a pocket of Faridkot, visiting South African toxicologist Dr Carin Smit had their hair samples sent to a German laboratory. The results, which have just come in, are shocking: the deformities were caused by alarmingly high levels of uranium. ''The test results have left us baffled as there's no apparent source of uranium in Punjab,'' said Prithpal Singh, head of Baba Farid Centre for Special Children in Faridkot. More tests are now being organized among the 150 affected children with the help of a team of German and South African doctors to establish whether the traces found are from depleted uranium or natural sources.

"There is no doubt that there has been a large increase in thyroid cancer incidence due to Chernobyl. I helped to bring this to public attention in 1992; we later showed that most cases have occurred among those who were young children at the time of exposure to high levels of fallout. This increase, initially seen in children is now occurring in young adults. Your special report on radiation (11 January), using World Health Organisation figures, comments that "only a few children have died of cancers since the accident". Apart from the tragedy of any child's death, measuring the impact only by mortality ignores the morbidity. Thyroid cancer generally has a very high cure rate, but thousands of thyroid operations have been carried out, some followed by multiple treatments and other consequences. The effects on the rest of Europe, largely exposed to low-dose radiation, are much less certain. The widely varying assessments of the numbers of deaths attributable to Chernobyl illustrate the need for a definitive unbiased long-term assessment of the overall consequences of the accident, as well as the need to maintain a sense of perspective."

IWAKI, Fukushima Prefecture--A survey of more than 1,000 children and babies living near the quake-stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant has produced an alarming finding: 45 percent of them suffered internal exposure to radiation following the accident there. Most children absorbed relatively low levels of radiation in their thyroid glands, according to officials who explained the results to residents in Iwaki, Fukushima Prefecture, on Aug. 17. Tests conducted in Iwaki city, Kawamata town and Iitate village between March 24 and 30 found that 26 percent of under-16s absorbed 0.01 microsievert per hour, while 11 percent absorbed 0.02 microsievert per hour. At least one child recorded radiation of 0.10 microsievert per hour, but officials said that level did not pose a health risk.

In the dark past of the Fernald School for the disabled, the nation's oldest publicly funded facility for those with developmental disabilities, some children were subject to Cold War experiments including being fed radioactive cereal while other patients allegedly were tagged as "morons" even as tests showed them to be normal. Now two Massachusetts lawmakers want the state to do right by the former residents of the controversial Fernald School, which opened in 1848 and is slated to closed next year. State Rep. Thomas Sannicandro, D-Ashland, has filed a bill that would require the state to apologize for alleged civil rights violations among patients at the Waltham facility. And state Rep. Thomas Stanley, D-Waltham, has filed a bill calling for a formal investigation of the misclassification of patients there. Both bills will be heard during a hearing Tuesday before the Joint Committee on Children, Families and Persons with Disabilities.

In the dark past of the Fernald School for the disabled, the nation's oldest publicly funded facility for those with developmental disabilities, some children were subject to Cold War experiments including being fed radioactive cereal while other patients allegedly were tagged as "morons" even as tests showed them to be normal. Now two Massachusetts lawmakers want the state to do right by the former residents of the controversial Fernald School, which opened in 1848 and is slated to closed next year. State Rep. Thomas Sannicandro, D-Ashland, has filed a bill that would require the state to apologize for alleged civil rights violations among patients at the Waltham facility. And state Rep. Thomas Stanley, D-Waltham, has filed a bill calling for a formal investigation of the misclassification of patients there. Both bills will be heard during a hearing Tuesday before the Joint Committee on Children, Families and Persons with Disabilities.

Evidence was growing this weekend that babies born in the Iraqi city of Fallujah - scene in 2004 of one of the few set-piece battles of the invasion - are exhibiting high rates of mortality and birth defects. In September this year, say campaigners, 170 children were born at Fallujah General Hospital, 24 per cent of whom died within seven days. Three-quarters of these exhibited deformities, including "children born with two heads, no heads, a single eye in their foreheads, or missing limbs". The comparable data for August 2002 - before the invasion - records 530 births, of whom six died and only one of whom was deformed.

Evidence was growing this weekend that babies born in the Iraqi city of Fallujah - scene in 2004 of one of the few set-piece battles of the invasion - are exhibiting high rates of mortality and birth defects. In September this year, say campaigners, 170 children were born at Fallujah General Hospital, 24 per cent of whom died within seven days. Three-quarters of these exhibited deformities, including "children born with two heads, no heads, a single eye in their foreheads, or missing limbs". The comparable data for August 2002 - before the invasion - records 530 births, of whom six died and only one of whom was deformed.

"Around 45 percent of children in Fukushima Prefecture checked by the prefectural and central governments in late March experienced thyroid exposure to radiation, although in all cases in trace amounts that didn't warrant further examination, officials of the Nuclear Safety Commission said Tuesday. The survey was conducted on 1,080 children from newborns to age 15 in Iwaki, Kawamata and Iitate from March 26 to 30 in light of radiation leaking from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant. Among children who tested positive for thyroid exposure, the amounts measured 0.04 microsievert per hour or less in most cases. The largest exposure was 0.1 microsievert per hour, equivalent to a yearly dose of 50 millisieverts for a 1-year-old."

"BHP Billiton says it will step up security at an old uranium testing site in Kalgoorlie after concerns children are accessing the area. Labor's candidate for the federal seat of O'Connor, Ian Bishop, says damage to a security gate has allowed children to enter the site at Hannan's north on dirt bikes. More than 5,000 tonnes of tailings from the Yeelirrie uranium deposit, near Wiluna, were buried in the area after BHP stopped testing ore-processing there in the 1980s."

"Confirming Punjab's worst fears and TOI reports, a document from Germany's Microtrace Mineral Lab has revealed that hair samples of 80% of 149 neurologically-disabled children, mainly from Punjab's Malwa region, have high levels of uranium. The report also establishes the presence of dangerous heavy metals in water. The presence of the radioactive element has strengthened doubts that depleted uranium used by US tanks in Iraq and Afghanistan was travelling through air, reaching not just Punjab but Delhi as well. TOI was first to report the suspected presence of uranium traces in the hair of kids undergoing treatment at Baba Farid Centre for Special Children. "

Family medical histories in and around Semey, a town in north-east Kazakhstan, read like horror stories. It has been two decades since the Soviet Union ended a nuclear test programme close to Semey, but the hundreds of explosions carried out have left a sinister legacy of cancer, birth defects, infertility and other abnormalities. Men and women have lost spouses in early middle age, while children have died young or been born with severe deformities. "All my relatives, children and grandchildren are sick," said Kasenova Kabuda, a 69-year-old who lives in a village called Sarzhal close to Semey.

Today, we face a new year, a new administration and a new era with the potential to begin the end of nuclear weapons. President-elect Barack Obama has invited Americans to share their vision of America and the world they want to see through his Change.gov Web site. At this critical time in our history, with so many complex issues and priorities not being addressed, I submit this New Year's wish - a wish for our children and their future. President-elect Obama: The people have spoken and have elected you to be the agent of change for our children and their future. The challenges, while great, are only exceeded by the opportunities.

A German study linking increased cancer rates in children with their proximity to nuclear power plants raised some eyebrows at the Blue Ridge Community Hall last week. Tipping Point, a Whitecourt-based anti-nuclear group invited German pediatrician Dr. Ernst Iskenius to present the results of the KiKK study to about 30 Whitecourt and Woodland County residents. The KiKK study was the second of two released by the German government last fall. Its results created a public outcry and debate, which is still continuing today in Europe. The first German study, published by Terschueren Hoffmann and D.B. Richardson found 14 cases of leukemia between 1990 and 2005 in children living within five kilometres from the Krummel nuclear plant in Geesthacht and another northern facility in Germany.

TEN children from Stolin, in Belarus, will arrive in Malvern for a four-week "health giving" holiday on Wednesday (June 18). The trip is being organised and funded by the Chernobyl Children Life Line Malvern and District Link charity, which has been operating the scheme for the last six years.

A German pediatrician who has traveled the world informing the public of what he sees are the dangers of nuclear power will be in Brattleboro on Feb. 25 and in Bellows Falls on Feb. 26 as part of a statewide lecture tour. Dr. Winfrid Eisenberg will discuss recent reports on the increased incidence of cancer in children living near nuclear installations and the health consequences of the Chernobyl nuclear accident. Eisenberg -- who speaks on the hazards of nuclear energy for children, nuclear disarmament and implications for human rights -- has participated in many public forums raising the awareness of the risks associated with the use of nuclear energy.

The Environmental Protection Agency plans to re-evaluate the rocket fuel chemical perchlorate, once made near Lake Mead, because of its potential health impacts on infants and children. Under the Bush administration, the EPA made a preliminary decision not to regulate perchlorate in drinking water. In the 1990s scientists discovered perchlorate from two chemical plants in Henderson in Las Vegas Wash and Lake Mead waters. Lake Mead supplies 90 percent of Las Vegas Valley's drinking water.

The Environmental Protection Agency plans to re-evaluate the rocket fuel chemical perchlorate, once made near Lake Mead, because of its potential health impacts on infants and children. Under the Bush administration, the EPA made a preliminary decision not to regulate perchlorate in drinking water. In the 1990s scientists discovered perchlorate from two chemical plants in Henderson in Las Vegas Wash and Lake Mead waters. Lake Mead supplies 90 percent of Las Vegas Valley's drinking water.