Kazakhstan - Health - Disease - Living in the Shadow of the A-Bomb

The population of Sargal was halved when the Soviet Union left the area following its nuclear testing. Today, almost all its 2,400 inhabitants suffer the consequences of the nuclear testing in one way or another. The scientists at the time had absolutely no concern for the inhabitants of the surrounding region and conducted their testing in the Polgon (test site) only 30 kilometers from the village. One person affected is Biken, born in 1951, two years after the first A bomb explosion. Nuclear fallout contaminated her mother, who died shortly after. Biken Balagazina was born disfigured and partially blind. She has two daughters, of which one suffers the same fate. The USSR detonated 467 nuclear bombs at the Semipalatinsk test site in northeast Kazakhstan, resulting in thousands of victims who suffer from radioactive diseases. | Location: Sargal, Kazakhstan. (Photo by John van Hasselt/Corbis via Getty Images)