Between 1966 and 1996, France carried out 193 nuclear tests in Polynesia, off the atolls of Mururoa and Fangataufa, in the Tuamotu archipelago, near Tahiti. Among them, 46 atmospheric nuclear tests – that is to say: carried out in the air rather than under water. The objective: to acquire nuclear weapons, like the United States and the USSR.
If the French authorities have always maintained that these nuclear tests (in particular atmospheric ones) were “clean” and “without consequence” for the health of Polynesians, a survey carried out by the investigative media Disclose disputes these conclusions and puts forward a number of cases of thyroid cancer.
A “cluster” of thyroid cancers in Polynesia
This survey, published this Tuesday, March 9, 2021, is based on a confidential report handed over to the Polynesian government in February 2020: written by a French military doctor, it maintains that because of the nuclear tests, 10,000 Polynesians (including 600 children under the age of 15) would have been exposed to a dose of radioactivity of 5 millisieverts (mSv) – i.e. 5 times higher than the dose deemed “safe” for human health…
Worse: according to the author of this report, “the presence of a “cluster” of thyroid cancers focused on the islands subjected to fallout during aerial shots (…) leaves little doubt about the role of ionizing radiation (…) in the occurrence of this excess of cancers“. Between 1998 and 2002, in Polynesia, the incidence rate of thyroid cancer was indeed the highest in the world…
But at present, the version of the French authorities remains unchanged: an Inserm report, published on February 23, 2021, affirms that the rare official studies carried out in Polynesia “are insufficient[e]s to draw firm conclusions on the links between exposure to ionizing radiation from fallout from atmospheric nuclear tests (…) and the occurrenceof diseases such as thyroid cancer.
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