Other symptoms include amnesia, hallucinations, nausea, motor dysfunction, and dizziness.
“This step has been taken by the families voluntarily, they decided to improve their living conditions in such a way, getting their own land instead of cold flats in half-destroyed buildings elsewhere,” Vladimir Alfyorov, an official at the local Krasnogorsk rural district, told the Interfax news agency.
The Kalachi village had a population of about 600 people, but many of them moved after the symptoms appeared.
READ MORE: Mystery of Kazakhstan’s ‘Sleepy Hollow’ disease tracked to uranium mine
The village is just 600 meters from the town of Krasnogorsk, where between the 1960s and 1990s there was a uranium mine, which some officials blame for the deteriorating health of the locals.
“Occasionally it [the mine] released carbon monoxide and hydrocarbon [sic, presumably methane] in high concentrations… That is when these ‘sleepy disease’ outbreaks happened,” Kazakhstan Deputy premier Berdybek Saparbayev said last month.
Locals thought the former uranium mine was the cause, too – however, they were sure that they were being affected by radiation.
RT’s crew discovered high levels of radiation – 17 times the norm – next to the mine, but not in the Kalachi village itself. To find out more, watch the documentary:
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