Leaking radon from abandoned Soviet-era uranium mines has been discovered as the cause of a mysterious sleeping sickness that had been puzzling doctors for months.
According to the Daily Mail, residents of the village Kalachi in Kazakhstan were falling asleep for days at a time after unknowingly breathing in the colourless, odourless and tasteless radon gas.
Professor Leonid Rikhvanov from the Kazakhstan’s Department of Geo-ecology and Geo-chemistry told the Daily Mail that conventional techniques for detecting radon only work in underground mines and are not sensitive enough for detecting the gas in the open air.
‘The mines left open spaces underground which were slowly filled with water that has risen upwards, driving pockets of gas inside them to the surface,” Professor Rikhvanov said.
‘The gas has a toxic effect that pushes a person into a dream like state, and the person then falls asleep.’
A treating medical officer in the village, Doctor Egor Korovin, explained the medical symptoms to the Daily Mail, “In medical terms they are suffering from encephalopathy, a disorder of the brain but the cause is unclear.”
“Scans have shown that many of the sufferers have excessive accumulation of fluid in their brains.”
Around 60 villagers, including children, have been struck down by the radon-poisoning sickness which affects memory and leaves the sufferer weak, dizzy and constantly fatigued.
Plans are currently underway to move the entire village away from the affected area.
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