Documents / FOIA release
This Central Intelligence Agency JPRS translation reproduces an IZVESTIYA article by A. Tarasov, published 26 October 1991, on the "Sverdlovsk syndrome." The illness left students and other harvest workers on Ural potato fields with toxic polyneuropathy. The article lists many suggested causes, from pesticides and thorium storage to military activity and UFOs, and gives Prof Ye. Krupin's view that imported pyrethroid pesticides were to blame. A postscript notes that a Russian Ministry of Health commission blamed combined factors and cleared the pesticides.
“University of Colorado”1 page
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
# Concatenated JPRS Reports, 1992
## Document 2 of 12
taken and university students were demoralized on the Krasnoufimskiy fields has been filled with amazing persistence with students from the Institute of Railroad Engineers, local schoolchildren, and tank crews from the Volga-Ural Military District.
8. Two years ago, the Uralenergochermet enterprise refused to pay for the sick leave of Nadezhda B., a Uralenergochermet engineer who became ill after five and a half hours of work at the Khramtsovo sovkhoz, despite the diagnosis made for her-the same one made for all the victims of the Ural fields, toxic polyneuropathy. Despite the note made on the sick leave chart (''production accident'') and despite the paperwork, signed by the sovkhoz director, which named the cause of the poisoning as combined action of pesticides. Today, Nadezhda is working at a different facility, but when we were talking with her about meeting her, she asked that we not call her at work and not use her name in the newspaper-''people who are sick aren't needed in the workplace, especially people like us.' Just as in 1989, the state is still doing what it can to make Nadezhda herself feel guilty for the illness.
9. The unusual incident of this year happened on fields where the health-epidemiological station has yet to find any traces of toxic substances. That's why, in the words of the chief neuropathologist of the oblast, Prof Ye. Krupin, a fairly difficult struggle lies ahead in the attempt to prove that the students aren't dragging their feet out of capriciousness.
10. So, in the ''Sverdlovsk syndrome,'' besides what's unique, there's also something that's standard, even hateful.
11. By the way, Krupin, who has seen those stricken with the mysterious sickness, has advanced his own version for the cause of the illness: the mystery lies in the incomprehensible use of a new generation of imported pesticides-pyrethroids. According to the professor's data, they have lost their ability to walk on the very farms in the oblast that have such toxins-particularly the neurotropic compounds tsimbush and sumicidin.
12. Indirectly supporting Krupin's version is this fact: in letters to IZVESTIYA about the mystery of the toxic fields, some readers have described in detail the symptoms they suffered after working in a field-and those symptoms are very similar to the symptoms of the Ural sickness. What's noteworthy is the return addresses on the letters-Belarus, Ukraine, the Volga region. There, as in the Urals, the use of pyrethroids has been sanctioned to control the Colorado beetle and other pests.
13. Krupin says this: there are influential officials who are Not linked to a story yet.
FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 4 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.