PARIS, 22 August — More than 1,000 people who worked on France’s former nuclear testing sites in the South Pacific have launched a campaign for access to their medical records.
The French and Polynesian workers were employed around the underwater nuclear sites of Mururoa and Fangataufa where tests were carried out from 1963 until seven years ago. The workers have never been privy to the results of medical examinations carried out on them by doctors from the French atomic energy authority. In France it is considered a civil right for individuals to have access to — and keep — their own medical records.
The 1,160 people in the association called Mururoa E Tatou ("Mururoa And Us") are not taking legal action. They say their aim is to gain recognition for potential health risks linked to radiation in a radius of 700 kilometers of Mururoa Atoll.
Bruno Barrillot of the French association for veterans of nuclear tests said residents of the 78 atolls close to the former test sites are increasingly worried. "At Tureia, which has 120 inhabitants and is the closest atoll to (uninhabited) Mururoa, seven people have died from cancer since 1999," he said.
Meanwhile the Defense Ministry claims all employees — civilian and military — have the right to see their medical files. But in an interview in Le Figaro yesterday, the widow of an atomic energy authority engineer who attended tests above ground and died five years ago from lung cancer, said she has never been allowed to see her late husband’s records.
In January this year, French Parliament heard from a special commission that tests could not have taken place "without some changes to the environment and without some risks to humans". Independent researchers in 1999 said radioactivity was up to 371 times greater than the legal limit at Mururoa and 94 times higher than the norm at Fangataufa.
Last month, French Green MPs proposed that France should follow the example of the United States and Australia in acknowledging the link between nuclear tests and health problems. (The Independent)
