Officials are on high alert after an unidentified object crashed into the desolate Andean plain near the Bolivian border, on Saturday.

According to local media reports, the object that left an 8 meters deep and 20 meters wide crater is believed to be a meteorite.

Signs of sickness have been appearing ever since the crash, with villagers and people who came to investigate that report suffering from nausea and sickness.

Scientists in specially designed radiation proof suits contained the area and analyzed the crater and the meteor inside.

"We have determined with precision instruments that there is no radiation," says engineer Renan Ramirez of the Peruvian Nuclear Energy Institute.

Due to the extremely high levels of heat produced by meteor strikes, sulfur, arsenic or other toxins may melt and be released in the air. Ramirez says the illnesses may have been triggered by just that.

"It is a conventional meteorite that, when it struck, produced gases by fusing with elements of the terrain," he says.

He also ruled out that the object was a satellite.

Hernando Tavera, a geophysicist at the Peruvian Nuclear Energy Institute, said similar cases were reported in 2002 and 2004 elsewhere in southern Peru but never confirmed as meteorites.