Toxic chemical poisoning strikes hundreds in Mykolaiv Oblast (09/03/00)

Toxic chemical poisoning strikes hundreds in Mykolaiv Oblast

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - A massive outbreak of what Mykolaiv Oblast officials are describing as toxic chemical poisoning has affected more than 400 individuals and has led to the declaration of a state of emergency in the region. On August 29, President Leonid Kuchma visited the area for a first-hand look at the situation, which health officials have said is due to water and soil contamination.

Officials of the Ministry of Health blamed the illnesses on environmental pollution from military toxic waste dumps that mark the area, which until recently had a large concentration of nuclear missile launch sites. The ministry said the outbreak is due to the decomposition of rocket fuels that have been improperly discarded. The Ministry of Defense, however, has denied any that any rocket fuel has been errantly misplaced or spilled in the area.

The first victims appeared in late June in the village of Boleslavchyk. Since then a total of 410 people - 240 children among them - have come down with the symptoms, which include nausea and headaches followed by sleepiness, fainting spells and the onset of an itchy rash. Seventy-six victims are currently hospitalized. The children of Boleslavchyk and the neighboring villages of Chausove, Michuryne and Pidhiria were evacuated only after scores of people had already fallen ill.

During his visit to the area, Mr. Kuchma chaired a meeting of a special commission formed to determine the cause of the thus far non-fatal affliction. Two theories as to the source of the epidemic are being considered, both of which relate to the leeching of toxins into local soil and water. The first hypothesis, which is supported by the oblast's chief medical official, puts the blame on improperly discarded rocket fuel from nearby nuclear missile launch sites, which only recently were dismantled and destroyed.

The second one implicates nitrates, commonly found in fertilizers that have entered the environment after illegal dumping by unknown agricultural entities. President Kuchma's press spokesman, Oleksander Martynenko, said that an investigation had begun into several fertilizer storage sites, including one formerly utilized by a South Korean firm.

After his meeting with the members of the commission and local officials, President Kuchma emphasized that it is too early to rule out either possibility and said he is inclined to believe that both theories have some merit.

"I am sure there is a complex cause," said President Kuchma.

The next day Mr. Martynenko added that, while not rejecting the leeching fuel theory outright, the government finds it dubious because in the recent past the nuclear missiles located in the area were the SS-24 series. He cited a report by the Pivdenne Design Bureau, which states that solid fuel such as that used by rockets in Ukraine does not contain heptyl or amyl, the two fuels suspected as possible causes of the illnesses.

Even so, President Kuchma sent a request to Moscow to determine in Soviet-era records whether there were any unpublicized earlier spills or leaks of rocket fuel from the older SS-18 series of nuclear missiles, which used liquid fuel. Ukrainian Ministry of Defense records indicate that the last major accident at a missile-launching site in the area occurred in 1978.

As the debate raged over the source of the epidemic, another lesser one continued on what prompted its onset. Some people in the village of Boleslavchyk said symptoms developed in the first victims after a huge pink and silver cloud of unknown origin developed above the area on May 28, according to the newspaper Den. Within a day birds had disappeared from the area, witnesses testified.

Others hypothesized that the epidemic's origin can be found in the unearthing of a large pit by local officials days before the first victims became ill. The pit, which was originally dug in 1978, is said to contain old rocket components and, ostensibly, fuel as well. That pit has now been covered once again.

The only thing the government officially has established, besides the fact that it has hundreds of people sick for unknown reasons, is that there is an abundance of toxic chemicals in the local soil and water supply.

Extensive testing has determined the existence of high levels of nitrosodimethylamide, fluorine ions and formaldehyde, which exceed safety parameters by 10 to 50 times. Those chemicals are by-products of the rocket fuels heptyl and amyl used in Soviet-era liquid fuel nuclear missiles. Large nitrate concentrations also have been found, exceeding safety levels by between two and 15 times.

President Kuchma said Kyiv would do everything possible to help treat the victims and determine the source of the problem. He committed 1 million hrv from state coffers to the local budget and instructed the government to immediately supply fresh drinking water.

The president also directed appropriate government ministries to conduct additional investigations of local agricultural fertilizer storage sites and nine older SS-18 missile-launch sites in the area that were scrapped in the 1960s-1970s.

Ukraine inherited 130 SS-19 and 46 SS-24 missiles from the Soviet Union, which it agreed to disarm and dismantle in a 1994 trilateral agreement involving Kyiv, Washington and Moscow. The last nuclear warhead was removed from Ukraine in July 1996. The final liquid fuel missiles were dismantled in June 1998. Prior to that, more than 9,000 tons of amyl and 3,300 tons of heptyl were discharged from the missiles and shipped for recycling.

The last of the SS-24 nuclear missiles, which utilize solid rocket fuel and are found mostly in the affected Pervomaisk raion, are to be scrapped by December 2001.

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