Residents: Area Is Doused With Rocket Fuel, Causing Health Problems

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Reporter's Notebook: Rocket Wasteland

Residents: Area Is Doused With Rocket Fuel, Causing Health Problems

Russian Authorities: Problems Casued By Heavy Metal Mining

Reported By CBS News Correspondent Palmer

STAROALEIKA, Russia

AP

A Soyuz rocket blasts off from the Baikonur cosmodrome.

(CBS) The Altai region is only a four-hour plane ride from Moscow but it's a

different world. It is breathtakingly beautiful - with big skies and vast

grain fields in the foreground, snow-capped mountains on the horizon. This

is the region Russia's space program litters with rocket parts. According to

the local residents, the region is also regularly doused with a fine spray

of unburned rocket fuel that causes a huge variety of health problems.

Russian rockets are actually launched some 800 miles to the east in

Khazakstan, but the second-stage boosters are jettisoned over Altai. They

are supposed to burn up in the atmosphere, and the few metal parts that do

make it to earth are meant to fall over uninhabited mountains. A combination

of bad calculation and technical error, however, means that some pieces

actually land in and around three villages nearby.

It is startling to be shown these twisted chunks of metal casually stacked

in farmyards and sheds. Even more startling to see the pictures and video of

entire boosters and fuel tanks that the residents have found in nearby

forests.

The real worry, though, is a fine greenish dust that the residents say comes

with the rain after most launches, and forms a film on puddles and ponds. No

one has taken samples of it, or had it tested, but it's a sign to both the

villagers and the local medical authorities that there is chemical fallout

from the rocket launches. They suspect the fallout of causing an alarmingly

high rate of thyroid disorders, cancers, rashes and birth defects in the

area.

In America, this situation would have attracted swarms of lawyers racing to

file rich damage suits against the Russian Space Agency and the government.

In Russia - where compensation through litigation is almost unknown (and

usually unaffordable) - the residents of the villages have little power to

force the authorities to do anything. Their hospitals are too sparsely

equipped to do any sophisticated analysis. In fact, the largest regional

hospital does not even have its own X-ray machine. So far, one respected

ecological institute in Altai has done a toxicity study in the area and

correlated it to disease. Even though the results were deeply worrisome,

official stonewalling shut down any attempts to investigate further.

A day after the CBS News crew arrived in Altai, we dragged ourselves out of

our beds at three in the morning to watch a rocket streak overhead. Our

guide was Viktor Mikhailovitch, a local farmer turned environmentalist, who

has made it his vocation to log the details of every launch - and its

fallout. Also driving out on the muddy roads that in the pre-dawn darkness

were two members of the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry, who are sent

to check that the flaming pieces of metal fall in the right trajectory and

not too dangerously close to habitation.

Precisely nine minutes after the rocket lifted off from the distant launch

pad in Baikonur, it appeared in the skies of Altai like a low comet, burning

white and silent. Low on the horizon, it burst into a shower of light like a

firework and we could see the sparkling fragments streaming earthward. Only

then, its thunder began to roll and echo around the hills.

This spectacle is repeated once a month, as the Russian Space program

launches rockets carrying satellites, space vehicles and military equipment.

Each time, according to Victor Mikhailovitch and local health authorities,

the soil and water of Altai receive another dose of poison.

There is no doubt that some of the fuels used to launch the Russian rockets

are highly toxic. Others, says the Russian Space Agency, are completely

inoffensive, like liquid oxygen. However, experts say that even in the most

neutral-sounding fuels are likely to contain additives that can be harmful

to plants and animals.

Nevertheless, the Space Agency says health problems in Altai are more likely

to have been caused by heavy metals mining in the region, or even an old

nuclear test site nearby. Its chief ecologist, Vitaly Sambros, insists that

the fuel burns up entirely before it reaches the earth so even potential

toxins don't come anywhere near living things.

However, on the bulletin board of the little clinic in Novoaleiska, one of

the villages under the rocket flight path, you can see the notices issued by

the Space Agency advising villagers of launch times, warning them to stay

indoors afterward, and not to touch any rocket fragments they might find on

the ground. For about a year, the Russian Space Agency had also begun to pay

compensation to the villagers, even though it was paltry: nine rubles, or

about thirty cents, per launch.

The compensation payments have since dried up as inexplicably as they began,

but Viktor Mikhailvotch says all this proves the Space Agency recognizes

there's an environmental hazard. He has minutely documented what he says are

cases of poisoning, and outbreaks of illness after each launch: the day the

Stepanovitch's chickens all died after pecking around the green film on

puddles, the way a stream of children shows up at the local clinic

complaining of breathing problems and stomach troubles 48 hours after each

launch.

He's paid for his vigilance though. Five years ago, Viktor Mikhailovitch was

the head of the local administration of Staryaleika, but when he took on the

Russian Space Agency, he was pushed out of his job. Here, in this deeply

conservative corner of Russia where collective farms are run on rigidly

hierarchical lines and old interests re main entrenched, " activism " -

especially of the green kind is not welcome. Many felt it was dangerous to

rock the boat.

Now, it appears finally that Viktor Mikhailovitch's tenacity is paying off.

The Russian Space Agency, alarmed by growing international attention and the

establishment of a United Nations World Heritage Biodiversity Reserve

nearby, has announced it will finally fund a three-year comprehensive

environmental study of the villages under the flight path, and take a close

look at the local health statistics.

" It's about time we received some answers " , says Viktor Mikhailovitch.

" Especially as we know that the Russian Space Agency is trying to expand its

rocket launching program and to pioneer space tourism. " He speaks for

everyone in the region when he says, " We are tired of paying for Russia's

space program with our health. "

©MMI, Viacom Internet Services Inc., .

Disease Fears On Rockets' Path

Russian Rockets Litter Altai Region With Debris, Pollution

Resident Claims Serious Health Problems As A Result

But Cash-Strapped Space Agency Denies It Is To Blame

STAROALEIKA, Russia, June 20, 2001

AP

A Soyuz rocket awaits launch at Baikonur.

(CBS) In the shadow of the Altai mountains lies some of the most remote and

beautiful countryside in all of Russia - and an increasing amount of

potentially deadly debris from rockets flying overhead on their way to

orbit.

CBS News Correspondent Palmer reports the rockets blast off from

the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Russia's version of Cape Canaveral, 800 miles to

the east and across the border in Kazakhstan.

The rockets' boosters come off over Altai, in Southern Siberia. They're

supposed to land harmlessly in an uninhabited area but they often fall short

of the target.

Last year, two pieces landed in Petrov's pasture.

" This thing almost hit my house, " he says.

But the pieces that Petrov found are small, compared to whole rocket

boosters people have discovered nearby.

Incredibly, no one has been killed yet by these chunks of metal, but the

people of this region are convinced they're dying anyway from another kind

of space fallout - rocket fuel that is sprayed into the air and seeps into

the water.

Many Russian rockets are powered with a fuel called dimethyl hydrazine,

which the Environmental Defense Fund reports is a carcinogen and toxic to

the skin, sense organs, liver, respiratory system, cardiovascular system and

nervous system. The EDF ranks it among the worst 10 percent of chemicals for

its effects on humans and the environment.

American rockets tend to be powered by hydrogen and oxygen fuels, as well as

aluminum perchlorate, an explosive chemical whose health effects,

particularly as a carcinogen, are still under study, according to the EPA.

In Altai, almost everyone has an ailment, from skin rashes that just won't

heal, to cancer and thyroid disorders. Birth defects are 10 times higher

than the national average.

Local doctors suspect toxic chemicals in unburned rocket fuel are to blame.

The Russian government tells villagers to stay indoors for 3 days after each

launch, but that's impossible, especially for children who have to go to

school.

Some of the young residents say they are literally losing their minds.

" We all have problems with our memories now, " says Viktoria Batalina, an

11th grader. " We have to read and reread our assignments. It's like we have

holes in our heads. "

Weekly doses of vitamins and iodine are the only thing the Russian

government provides to stave off illness.

In spite of convincing medical evidence, Russia's Space Agency denies its

rockets are poisoning Altai. The agency's ecologist, Vitaly Sambros, blames

heavy metals in the soil and nuclear testing nearby for conditions in the

region.

The agency's reticence to admit a problem might be forced by economic

necessity: The cash-strapped Russians want to increase commercial rocket

launches and expand space tourism.

Research by the Pacific Environment and Resources Center indicates that

launching rockets from Baikonur is one-half as expensive as from other

Russian sites. Logs suggest at least 30 rockets were launched from Baikonur

last year.

But more rockets overhead, say the villagers, mean more victims below,

paying for Russia's space program with their health.

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