Uranium-in-hair test useless

I wrote the following article in response to of a news-story on "uranium in the hair of children of Faridkot"

Dr K.S.Parthasarathy




SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY Friday, April 24, 2009, Chandigarh, India
Uranium-in-hair test useless
K.S. Parthasarathy

For the past few weeks, the ‘uranium in hair’ news story from Faridkot has been receiving a lot of media attention.The presence of uranium in hair is nothing new. In USA, several analytical laboratories analyze hair samples and offer advice and treatment. At US $180 per sample, it is a thriving business. Experts argue that the test is useless in the diagnosis of diseases.

Presence of uranium in the hair of children by itself does not mean anything. “I have data on uranium in hair for more than 20,000 persons. I have never seen a single case in which it was clinically significant and affected treatment”, said Dr William Walsh, a specialist in the field responding to my e-mail query.

According to Ronald Kathren, Emeritus Professor, Washington State University, a well-known expert on uranium related fields, background levels of uranium in hair vary highly from person to person and region to region, depending largely on dietary factors.

On June 17, 2008, Aetna, the US agency providing scientific information on health care, asserted that hair analysis has not been proven to be of use in either the diagnosis or treatment of autism.

The American Autism Society concluded thus: “The exact cause of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) is not well understood. …..Currently there are no biological markers for ASD, and diagnosis is based solely on behavioral criteria”.

Pritpal Sigh, head of Baba Farid claimed that “the results were startling”… “around 80 per cent of samples… revealed the presence of uranium in levels that the experts have described as pathological,” he said.

Did they collect for comparison, hair samples from their healthy siblings or from normal children from the regions from which the autistic children came? The study appears to be flawed. My repeated attempts to get the uranium test results from the German Company failed.

Some people made un-substantiated, un-scientific and preposterous claims on the origin of uranium. They attributed the allegedly increased levels to Indian nuclear reactors at 150 km away away, Pakistan’s reactors and winds from Afghanistan. A competent team of scientists from the Department of Atomic Energy is studying the matter. I do not want to prejudice their investigation.

During the 60s, some people in USA argued that uranium in peaches from a region near the Hudson River might have originated from a uranium enrichment plant located across the river.

An enterprising lawyer found that peaches from far off California also contained uranium. Peaches grown in cultivated farms, using fertilizers were more “radioactive” than those grown in virgin fields. Phosphatic fertilizers contain uranium!

Uranium run off from the fields may cause increase in the concentration of uranium in drinking water. This aspect needs closer investigation. Uranium enters body through food and water. Most of it is excreted promptly. Body retains a small portion. A portion of it appears in hair.

We cannot avoid the presence of uranium around us. It is present in rocks, soil, water etc. The first one metre layer of a ten cent piece of land may contain about one kg of uranium. It may be more, or less depending on local geology. Water entering the soil pores carries traces of uranium with it.

Normally, the uranium concentrations in water in India are less than a fraction of a microgramme to a few microgrammes per litre. Scientists have measured moderately high concentrations at a few locations.

Researchers have found that the maximum concentrations of a few hundred to a few thousand microgrmmes per litre in USA, Finland and UK. For uranium, the maximum acceptable concentration of uranium in water is based on its chemical toxicity.

On September 15, 2008, Pritpal Singh sought financial support from Mukesh Ambani. “Dr Carin Smit with her team visited our centre and stayed with us for 15 days and diagnosed the most severe cases and came to the conclusion that mostly kids are highly toxified because of Mercury,” he wrote.

Now Smit claims that uranium is the cause for the health conditions of the children! The investigations on the appropriateness and the legality of some of the treatment practices such as “chelation therapy”, advocated by the foreign team, may open a can of worms.

— The writer is former Secretary, Atomic Energy Regulatory Board

Radiation hits insects

Researchers have found that the populations of insects dwindling at Chernobyl, the World's most sever nuclear accident. Not much systematic work has been reported from the region. Reduction in insect populations can be due to many reasons. More definitive studies are needed to get the final answers.

Dr.K.S.Parthasarathy





Radiation hits insects
K.S. Parthasarathy

















Nearly 23 years ago, on April 26 1986, the most serious accident at Unit 4 of the Chernobyl nuclear power station released large quantities of radioactive materials. Anders P. Moeller and Timothy A. Mousseau, researchers at the University of Paris and South Carolina respectively noted that the ecological consequences of radiation from Chernobyl are poorly known. In the Biology Letters, published on line on March 18, 2009, they claimed reductions in the abundance of insects and spiders linked to radiation from Chernobyl.

Their study covered insect pollinators (bumble-bees and butterflies), predators (dragon flies and spiders) and herbs-feeding insects such as grasshoppers.

Compared to other studies published so far, the present study produced by far the most extensive dataset. The authors carried out two kinds of insect census: point counts covering over 700 sites over three years and line transects.

Since environmental factors other than radiation can affect the abundance of insects, they controlled potentially confounding variables that could affect the relationship between abundance and the level of radiation.

The authors have used scientifically sound methods of census and statistically robust analysis to arrive at their notable conclusions.

Based on other studies they concluded that most radiation around Chernobyl is currently in the topmost soil where most insects live.

“Butterfly eggs, larvae or pupae spent time in the soil layer or vegetation just above. This could negatively affect survival and fecundity and hence abundance. Alternatively, indirect effects of radiation on prey could potentially explain the reduced abundance of spiders and dragonflies, but not the reduced abundance of bumble-bees, butterflies and grasshoppers”, the authors argue.

The authors believe that these results have implications for ecosystems and overall ecosystem functioning. They noted that reduced abundance of pollinators such as bumble-bees and butterflies generally affects plant fecundity and seed set when plant fecundity is pollen limited.

Spiders feed on other insects; if spider population dwindles, it may have impact on the abundance of other insects. “Pollination and predation are considered important ecosystem functioning, suggesting that the Chernobyl region and its surrounding is a perturbed ecosystem”, the authors clarified.

The dwindling population of insects in Chernobyl may very well be due to the rise in populations of insect-eating species such as birds in the exclusion zone around the stricken reactor. Anecdotal evidence suggests that many species sprang up in the absence human habitation. Much more work is needed to get final answers.

Background radiation in certain areas of Kerala and Tamil Nadu is above normal (far too less than that in Chernobyl). I asked Dr Mousseau whether the study of insects and other invertebrates in such high background radiation areas (HBRA) is of any interest. “It would seem to me that this region would likely reveal some very interesting adaptations to radiation that might not have had time to evolve in other regions”, he responded.

. “…it would be important to focus on a few key species that occur in this area and examine survival and reproduction with control sites. Similarly, it would be valuable to examine the community of organisms, especially insects, to determine if species composition changes in a predictable way. Either way, I suspect that this region would be an excellent target for further investigation and my suspicion is that one would be very likely to generate many exciting discoveries of organismal responses to this environmental effect”, he asserted.

Such studies in the high background radiation areas in India may offer invaluable information on the impact of low level radiation on insects, earthworms and such other species.

— The writer is Raja Ramanna Fellow, Department of Atomic Energy

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India's heavy water project comes of age

The Heavy Water Board (HWB), India mastered the technology to produce heavy water indigenously. India is now self sufficient in heavy water and has exported substantial quantities of it. the brief article in the Edit Page of the Deccan Herald reviews the progress made by HWB.

Dr K.S.Parthasarathy





April 6, 2009

IN PERSPECTIVE
India's heavy water project comes of age
By K S Parthasarathy
Techonology for heavy water is being developed. This may lower energy consumption by 60 pc.


It is six decades since Dr Homi Jehangir Bhabha, the architect of nuclear India, initiated moves to make heavy water as a strategic material; he dreamt that India should produce large quantities of it indigenously. He converted his dream into a resolution and got it approved by the Board of Research on Atomic Energy at its second meeting held in Bombay on April 9 and 10, 1948.

“The government should explore the possibilities of using cheap hydroelectric power in India for manufacturing heavy water, on the one hand for our own requirements, and on the other for sale to other countries,” Bhabha pleaded in a covering note to Nehru. The Board’s resolution did not refer to any sale to other countries. So it probably was an afterthought by Bhabha.

In 1954, Dr Bhabha convinced Nehru to set up a fertiliser cum heavy water plant (HWP) at Nangal. The Nangal plant, the largest plant of this type in the world, produced the first drop of heavy water on August 9, 1962. In the next few decades, such drops accumulated into drums at Nangal, Kota, Tuticorin, Thalcher, Baroda, Thal, Hazira and Manuguru.

The rest as they say is history. From dreams to drums, the saga of heavy water production in India is a notable success story.

Heavy water is the coolant and moderator in Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors (PHWR). India is self sufficient in heavy water production, and the Heavy Water Board (HWB) has exported 205 tonnes of heavy water so far.

Heavy water is similar to ordinary water (H2O). But there is a key difference in it. In heavy water, two regular hydrogen atoms are replaced with deuterium, a heavy isotope of hydrogen. Ordinary water contains about 150 parts per million of heavy water. We have to process over 100, ten litre buckets of water to get a cup of heavy water.

India is the largest manufacturer of heavy water in the world, perhaps the only country which has mastered the two processes (hydrogen sulphide-water bi-thermal and ammonia -hydrogen mono-thermal) to produce it. HWB is developing a technology at Baroda using water — ammonia exchange process to operate a heavy water plant independently of fertiliser plants. The cost of energy constitutes 70-80 per cent of the operating cost of HWPs. HWB could reduce over the last decade, specific energy (energy needed to produce a kg of heavy water) consumption by about 36 per cent by systematic energy conservation measures.

It is developing a novel, safe and clean technology to produce heavy water based on hydrogen-water exchange process; specific energy consumption may then be reduced by a further 60 per cent.

Low cost

Chairman and managing director of the Nuclear Power Corporation of India (NPCIL) SK Jain, the main customer of HWB, has acknowledged that the cost of heavy water had come down by 20 per cent in the last few years. “NPCIL could have a surplus of Rs 11,000 crore just on that account,” he said. Plus during 2007-08, all heavy water plants excelled in their performance.

“The capacity utilisation during 2008-09 is expected to touch 125 per cent. HWP Manuguru achieved a capacity utilisation of 137 per cent and the lowest ever specific energy consumption during the year” A L N Rao chairman and chief executive, HWB, informed scientists attending the Heavy Water Day-2009.

HWB has diversified its activities successfully. The board produced many solvents vital to the nuclear industry, and extracted 18O, a valuable isotope for biomedical research, developed technologies to produce sodium metal, to recover uranium from phosphatic fertilisers and to prepare enriched boron.

HWB has faced many challenges (plant operation with fertiliser factories, power scarcity, export controls, poor national industrial infrastructure etc.) in mastering a technology known only to a few advanced countries.

Rao said, “In the functioning of the HWB or of various sub-committees of the board, or of the senior officers at different levels, I have seen team building qualities, challenges being taken up by youngsters and not getting stuck with problems but finding a way out. That’s what has made us move forward.”

Aptly said, the mood is upbeat in HWB.

(The writer is with the Department of Atomic Energy)