Updated: 13:17, Thursday March 23, 2006
SkyNews
An expert in the spread of diseases has claimed the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986 may have caused more than 1,000 infant deaths in Britain.
John Urquhart says his research suggests the fatalities in the years following Chernobyl were higher in areas where the fallout plume passed overhead.
The epidemiologist has analysed health statistics in areas where "black rain" clouds passed over in the wake of the Soviet reactor blast.
He has calculated there was an 11% rise in infant deaths between 1986 and 1989 in affected areas as opposed to 4% in other areas.
That translated into more than 1,000 deaths.
His study also suggests that a downward trend in infant mortality in affected areas was interrupted in the four years after Chernobyl.
Official maps are said to show fallout sweeping through Kent and London into Hertfordshire and the East Midlands before curving round Bradford and passing over the Isle of Man towards Northern Ireland.
A separate affected area stretched from the Isle of Wight to Bristol, taking the total area potentially affected to around half of the land mass of England and Wales.
This is a much broader area than was popularly believed to have been underneath the plume.
Mr Urquhart was addressing a Nuclear Free Local Authorities conference in London to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the disaster.
