Cancer occurrence going up in Oryol region

Yegor Stroyev, Governor of the Oryol region, southern Russia, addressed, Monday, the medical radiological research centre based in Obninsk, near Moscow, requesting it to carry out a thorough radiological and epidemiological study in the region and determine how grave the risk its residents are facing over "Chernobyl's echo" is. The probe would aim to find out whether the radiation background is still above the norm, with 16 years having passed since the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster, said Mr Stroyev.

There are two things which prompted the governor to make the above request - a dramatic increase in cancer occurrence and the fact that nearly a thousand villages and towns in the region have been stricken off the list of victims to the Chernobyl accident, the move Mr Stroyev believes to be ungrounded.