The cluster
of four villages in southern Ukraine was coping with searing summer
heat when the mysterious illness struck, creeping from one house
to another.
Hundreds of
people were soon complaining of symptoms that included drowsiness,
head and stomach pains, burning eyes and skin rashes.
About 400
of the more than 2,600 village residents were hospitalized in
July and August. Doctors were unable to diagnose the ailment,
which also affected the livers and pancreases of victims, saying
only that it was apparently caused by an unknown chemical agent.
But some residents
thought they knew the cause: rocket fuel and debris from Soviet-era
missiles that had been based less than a mile from their homes
in the villages of Boleslavchyk, Pidhiria, Michuryno and Chausovo.
They rejected the Defense Ministry's denials, and suspected the
military wasn't interested in discovering the truth.
"It must
be something military, what else? But I have my remedy,"
said an elderly man named Mykola, fishing in a pond in Boleslavchyk.
He swallowed the last drops from a small bottle of vodka.
Just outside
Boleslavchyk, a peaceful village of small white houses, overgrown
bushes conceal heaps of broken concrete - the remains of a destroyed
missile silo. The area once held liquid-fuel nuclear missiles
and still serves as a base for solid-fuel SS-24s.
Ukraine inherited
46 SS-24s and 130 SS-19 missiles from the Soviet Union. Kiev has
since surrendered all its nuclear warheads to Russia and destroyed
the SS-19s, while most of its SS-24s along with their silos are
to be destroyed under a disarmament plan running through 2001.
Many in Boleslavchyk
maintain the health menace can be traced to a farm where the Soviet
army supposedly buried debris while dismantling outdated missiles
in the late 1970s. Metal scavengers recently excavated an old
pit there, and some villagers swear they saw a strange cloud that
later swept over Boleslavchyk.
But retired
tractor driver Ivan Muliar was skeptical. He said that plenty
of people had worked at the farm for years and never gotten sick,
and the scavengers weren't among the victims of the mysterious
illness.
"Look,
those boys who dug out the metal did not get sick," argued
Muliar. "There must be some other reason."
The Defense
Ministry adamantly denies the missiles or their fuel could have
caused the poisoning, and health experts have backed off from
their initial finding that the soil and water contained traces
of substances usually produced by decomposing missile fuel.
The region
has a host of other environmental scourges, including an ammonia
pipeline and an abandoned nickel plant. Official explanations
for the poisoning range from excessive amounts of nitrates presumably
used in fertilizer to poisonous fumes released by scavengers burning
plastic insulation off copper cables.
U.S. experts
from the Environmental Protection Agency and the Atlanta-based
Centers for Disease Control, an Israeli medical team and Ukrainian
investigative commission have all visited the site. None could
offer any conclusive explanation and said full analysis would
be costly and time-consuming.
The mystery
could remain unsolved forever.
Yet it has
brought some good to the area 190 miles south of the capital,
Kiev, throwing a spotlight on its poverty and environmental ills.
Charities have sent food and clothes. The government is building
a running water supply and has promised a pipeline network to
provide household gas.
The victims
have recovered, the investigators have gone, and life in the villages
is returning to normal. Yet the residents remain fearful.
"We don't
know what caused all this," said Oleksandra Pochekha, the
mayor of Boleslavchyk. "But we want a clear answer.... Next
year, spring will come, it will be hot again and this could start
all over again."
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