A nuclear test veterans organisation in French Polynesia has taken issue with an epidemiological study announced by the French government.
The defence ministry in Paris said it would study those 21,000 veterans from the atomic weapons test era in French Polynesia whose exposure to radiation had been measured.
Picture taken in 1971, showing a nuclear explosion in Mururoa atoll. Photo: AFP
However, La Depeche de Tahiti reports that the group Tamarii Moruroa considers this to be inadequate.
In a letter, the group points to the thousands of other military staff, civilian employees and residents who were exposed to the tests but whose health was not measured.
It also casts doubt on findings of a study dating back to 2009 when it was established that the mortality rate of test veterans was lower than that of the general population.
John Doom (L), the founder of the association for the victims of nuclear tests called "Mururoa e Tatou", reads the list of the 319 members who died since the creation of the association on 2 July 1966. Photo: AFP
The French defence ministry says its latest epidemiological study should help update the findings of two previous studies and help improve assessing their health care risks of the veterans.
The first study found that by the end of 2008 more than 5,500 had died.
France has been slow in acknowledging the nuclear tests' impact on human health, maintaining until less tha a decade ago that they were clean.
A compensation law was drawn up in 2009 but to date most applicants have been rejected.
Between 1966 and 1996, France tested 193 nuclear weapons in the South Pacific.
50 years after the first nuclear test, and 20 years after the last. The French Polynesia atoll of Mururoa is still largely a no-go zone. Photo: AFP