OVER 100,000 Balkan villagers may have died from kidney failure brought on by
toxic chemicals seeping into their well water from shallow coal deposits.
Robert Finkelman of the US Geological Survey in Reston, Virginia, has found
that well water in regions where people suffer from Balkan endemic nephropathy
has elevated levels of organic poisons such as polycyclic aromatic
hydrocarbons.
First recognised in 1956, the condition affects villagers aged 40 to 60 in
valleys along tributaries of the Danube. Unlike most victims of kidney failure,
only about 20 per cent of them have high blood pressure, but 40 to 50…
