Deaths up near N-plant

Press, 2 April 1980, Page 9

Deaths up near N-plant

NZPA-Reuter. . Harrisburg. Pennsylvania i. Infant mortality increased sharply near rhe Three Mile Island nuclear power plant after the country’s worst nuclear accident there a year •ago. the state's health agency has said. The Pennsylvania Department of Health said infant mortality had increased in a 16km area around the plant during the six months after the March 28. 1979 accident. However, the department . said, the cause and significance of the increase were not known yet The figures show that bei tween April and September, 11977, there were 20 .deaths, i among Children under one, : During. ,tlie .-same' ’.period in ! 1978 tliove were 14. y ] In the six months after’ the accident, there were 31 infant deaths.. sharply higher ttyn. during the previous two periods and about twice 1 the state, average. Dr Gordon Macleod, a University of Pittsburgh professor ,who was.. Pennsylvania’s secretary of health at , t'pe time of the accident and (who first made the figures pub’ic yesterday, said: , , “It is highly" unlikely that radiation directly caused the increase. Rut we ought to .go looking for, the causes,“ Dr Macleod was fired from his post last October by the Governor of Pennsylv a n i a (Mr Richard Thornburgh) who cited “differences in institutional style.” The doctor is not opposed to nuclear energy, which he says is as safe as or safer than many other forms of energy. He said accident-related psychological stress among pregnant women might have caused the death-rate increase. . _