Il y a eu une étude non publiée , la revue Nature y a consacré un article dans un numéro de 2005
tiré de Armenian medical network:
http://www.health.am/ab/more/russian_rocket_site_linked_to_child_sickness/
Unburned fuel from rockets launched at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan is causing serious illnesses in children who live near the site, a leading science journal said on Wednesday.
Researchers from Vector, the State Research Centre of Virology and Biotechnology in Novosibirsk, showed in an unpublished study that children in areas of Siberia where the fuel is sprayed during take-off suffer serious health problems.
"The level of some diseases such as endocrine and blood disorders in polluted areas is more than twice the regional average, they say,” according to the journal Nature.
Baikonur, which is used by the Russian space agency, Rosaviakosmos, the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA, is the launch pad for many missions to the International Space Station and a source of income for the Russian government.
An unnamed expert in the country’s space industry told the journal that profit from an individual commercial launch could be as much as $25 million.
Nature, a peer-review journal, said it published the report as a news story because it has important implications.
“The first detailed epidemiological study of people living under the flight path suggests that the rocket fuel is indeed causing health problems,” it said in an editorial.
Vector scientist Sergey Zykov estimates dozens of litres of unburned fuel from spent rocket stages containing toxic substances are sprayed over several kilometres during a launch.
“Most other major bases used by NASA and ESA, such as Cape Canaveral in Florida, send rockets out over the ocean,” the journal said.
When Nature approached Rosaviakosmos about the study, it rejected the findings. Other scientists who have raised the issue told the journal they had been arrested or harassed. Local environmental groups have also campaigned against the pollution.
“Despite using Baikonur for launches, neither NASA nor ESA accepts responsibility for the problems associated with the site,” the journal said.
NASA admitted it was aware of the pollution but said Rosaviakosmos has made “positive progress” in reducing the quantity of fuel released. ESA said it is not responsible for the rockets because it is only buying the service of the cosmodrome.
The Vector scientists discovered the increased rate of illness when they compared the health records of 1,000 children from the Altai Republic, a region in southern Siberia, in 1998-2000 with 330 records from an unpolluted region nearby.
“Grouping all cases of disease together, Zykov’s team concluded that children from the worst affected area were up to twice as likely to require medical attention during the three years studied and needed to be treated twice as long,” Nature added.
voir auss un article (de 2000) de "the guardian": http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2000/dec/10/spaceexploration.theobserver
Scandal of children poisoned by Russian space junk
The debris from rocket launches is causing sickness and birth defects deep in Siberia. Amelia Gentleman reports from Moscow
Every time a Russian rocket lifts off from its launch pad at Baikonur, residents in the tiny Siberian village of Ploskoye, more than 1,000 miles away, are shaken nine minutes later by a terrible explosion.
If it is dark, firework flashes are visible in the sky above their homes, with streaking flames burning through the air as fuel falls to Earth. During the day a misty yellowish cloud sometimes hangs over the region. Villagers say the noise of the blast sets dogs howling for hours.
In the days after each launch, rocket fragments from the shuttles ferrying astronauts and equipment to Mir, or to the International Space Station, can be found in the hills and forests nearby.
From time to time, local farmers discover massive, shining metal cylinders - up to seven metres long and three metres wide - which have in the past been seized with delight and converted into chicken coops, hunting huts or grain storage tanks.
Recently, however, as more information emerges about the poisonous fuels lining the wreckage, locals have started to regard the debris with mounting alarm. Village doctors have charted a growth in illnesses among their patients - from cancer to bronchial spasms to defects in new-born children - and concluded they are connected to the scattering of cosmic litter on the region. Teachers report that in the days following each launch, children complain of stomach pains, dizziness and headaches and find it hard to concentrate.
After decades of concealing the problem, the Russian space agency, Rosaviakosmos, has conceded the regular jettisoning of sections of rocket engine on this region of Siberia and up to 20 other areas in Russia may have a harmful effect on the local population and has agreed to fund preliminary research. Villagers demand compensation for the harmful effects of living for the past 40 years in what they see as a huge dustbin for Russia's space programme.
The problem lies in the design of the Soyuz and Proton rockets, built to discard the engines that power their lift-off and passage through the atmosphere. The Soyuz's first four side-blocks - each of which contains four engines - drop from its hull around a minute after lift-off over Kazakhstan. The second stage of the rocket, which contains another four engines, drops eight minutes later, while a third is meant to burn up in the sky.
According to maps held at Rosaviakosmos's headquarters in Moscow, the second section should fall somewhere within an area in an uninhabited part of the mountains of Gorno-Altai, classified Dropping Region 306. In reality, say the villagers of Ploskoye and nearby Novoaleiskoye, several miles outside the allocated space, the rocket pieces rain down on them.
The danger of anyone being hurt by a falling fragment is extremely slim, and Rosaviakosmos officials point out that since Russia's space programme began in 1960, the only casualties have been cattle. But the real danger lies in the unburnt rocket fuel that falls with the metal.
While Soyuz rockets are powered by a relatively innocuous combination of kerosene and liquid oxygen, Proton rockets run on a highly noxious fuel called heptyl which can cause severe blood and liver problems. Viktor Pakhomov, 55, head of the Ploskoye administration, is seeking to discover why, in his village of 1,000, people are becoming more and more unwell. For 40 years, little official research has been done into the connections between illness and the space programme; so Pakhomov has tried to catalogue its effects himself.
As a result of his attempts to collect and identify toxic fuel remnants, he has burnt his retinas to the point of near-blindness, suffered from temporary paralysis in his hands and scorched his lungs by breathing in poisonous fluids. 'We have never been sent any protective equipment to help us handle the material, because the local authorities have never admitted there is a problem,' he said.
The space agency warns him of most launches, and he broadcasts a radio warning telling locals to stay inside and avoid drawing water from rivers in the days following.
He has recorded all cases of sickness after launches. Villagers have become ill from eating cucumbers from their gardens after rocket debris was found nearby, men have come out in blisters from swimming in the river, and farmers' arms have been covered in sores harvesting hay.
Ploskoye doctor Olga Varova is besieged by new patients every time a rocket is launched. 'We have people complaining of nausea, vomiting, headaches and finding it hard to breathe,' she said. 'But more worrying are what appear to be the cumulative effects of the pollution. In the last five years, not one child in the village has been born completely fit - each baby has been diagnosed with blood problems or nervous system complaints.'
Emma Ladoga, acting head doctor at the regional hospital, said: 'People here aren't ill because they're poor; we think their illnesses are connected to the environmental situation.' A study showed people from the affected villages were twice as likely to suffer from thyroid cancers as those in a control village.
Mikhail Shashin, head of the Siberian environmental group, Katun, said pollution from space activity was a serious international problem - only American citizens did not suffer in the same way, because rockets launched in the US drop their debris over the ocean. 'If the situation is to improve, we need to have a global agreement restricting the number of rocket launches,' he said.
Under a new agreement signed between Rosaviakosmos and the local authorities, the region surrounding Ploskoye will get 90,000 roubles (£2,250) every time a commercial launch takes place. The money does not represent compensation, but is allocated as rent on the land for the six hours during which lift-off occurs.
'We don't believe there is any case for compensation yet. Rocket launches, like industrial activity, aeroplane or car travel, naturally have some effect on the environment, but there is nothing to prove people are suffering,' Alexander Bolysov of Rosaviakosmos commented. 'These environmental issues have become very fashionable recently. Nobody ever suggests that we should stop air travel because people occasionally die on aeroplanes.'
But the allocation of new money to fund research into environmental and health problems in the region indicates the organisation has become uncomfortable about inhabitants' complaints.
So far the only money villagers in Ploskoye have seen was a nine rouble (22.5p) handout from the local administration to each inhabitant earlier this year.
Nikolai Shtifinov, head of the local environment committee, said: 'In any civilised country, the government would admit the problem and would pay us compensation. What do we get? Nine roubles - it's not even enough to buy a jar of coffee.'
Il y a aussi de nombreux articles concernant la pollution dûe au spatial aux USA