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The
human and health costs of While
the full human impact of the Dirk Bannink AT
0123 hrs on 26 April 1986, the fourth reactor of the The disaster was a unique industrial accident due to the scale of its social, economic and environmental impacts and longevity. It is estimated that, in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia alone, around nine million people were directly affected resulting from the fact that the long-lived radioactivity released was more than 200 times that of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Across
the former This
contamination will persist for centuries, and many countries as well
as About
the health consequences of the IAEA underestimates health consequences In
April 1996, the IAEA, together with WHO and the European Commission,
organised the conference 'One Decade After Chernobyl: Summing Up the
Consequences'. The conclusions of the IAEA on the health effects of
the * The death rate among 'liquidators'1 did not exceed that for a corresponding age group. * Thus far, the only admitted health effect due to radiation was an increase in thyroid cancers in children. Eight hundred and ninety cases were detected. In the coming decades, several thousand more cases of thyroid cancer (4,000-8,000) could be expected. * No significant increase in leukaemia had been found. * Future cancer deaths would be about 6,660: 2,200 among liquidators and 4,460 among residents and evacuees of contaminated areas. * Other health effects were related to psychological stress: fear of radiation and a distrust in the government.2 The
IAEA conclusions on The conclusion of the IAEA that the death rate among liquidators was not higher than normal and its silence on the high incidence of diseases indicated a lack of appreciation for the work they did. The IAEA denied that a significant increase in leukaemia among the liquidators had been found. But a study on a group of liquidators showed that five years after their work, cases of leukaemia reached a peak and subsequently decreased. The expected time between receiving a high dose of radiation and the development of leukaemia is five years. A relation therefore seems clear.6 Questionable The
IAEA's conclusion that other health problems were related to psychological
stress is questionable. It is certainly true that liquidators and inhabitants
of contaminated areas were fearful of the consequences of the disaster.
This would contribute to the illnesses that already existed or that
could be expected in the future. But to claim that all diseases other
than thyroid cancer and leukaemia were caused by stress is pure nonsense.
The rate of birth defects, for instance, showed a correlation with the
amount of contamination. In highly affected areas, more birth defects
had been diagnosed and the defects were worse in nature. In It seems that the IAEA wanted to relate the increase in diseases mainly to psychological stress. Radiation would only be the cause of higher incidence of thyroid cancer and leukaemia. In this way, the number of deaths caused by radiation would be low. If the IAEA were to be believed, the other diseases/deaths were simply caused by stress. The IAEA projections on future cancer deaths were also very low when one considers the dose to which the liquidators and inhabitants had been exposed. With the received collective dose, calculations can be made on the expected number of cancer deaths in the future. When these calculations were made with dose-effect figures from the official pro-nuclear International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP), a death total of 50,000 to 70,000 could be expected - only due to radiation exposure in the first two years after the accident.8 The American radiation expert John Gofman made even more dramatic calculations. Because the ICRP dose-effect figures were too low, he made calculations with a figure for risk for received radiation six times higher. He calculated that 317,000 to 475,000 deaths could be expected worldwide.8 The figure of 6,660 mentioned by the IAEA would certainly be too low. IAEA study 'rubbish' According to a September 2005 IAEA press release introducing the report 'Chernobyl's Legacy: Health, Environmental and Socio-Economic Impacts', a total of up to 4,000 people could eventually die of radiation exposure from the Chernobyl accident. '[A]s of mid-2005, however, fewer than 50 deaths had been directly attributed to radiation from the disaster.' Dr Rosalie Bertell, a well-known expert, made many comments on the IAEA's press release. One of these comments was on the following quote: 'Approximately 1,000 on-site reactor staff and emergency workers were heavily exposed to high-level radiation on the first day of the accident; among the more than 200,000 emergency and recovery operation workers exposed during the period from 1986-1987, an estimated 2,200 radiation-caused deaths can be expected during their lifetime.' According to Bertell, 'Radiation-caused deaths is a loaded statement. It assumes that only death is considered to be detrimental, and eliminates the consideration of all severe and debilitating morbidity. Moreover, these scientists, trained by the documents released by the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) over the last 50 years, have accepted without question that the only health effects "of concern" attributable to radiation are deaths from cancer. Non-fatal cancers are basically of no concern. These are administrative decisions and not science...' Dr
Angelica Claussen from the German branch of the International Physicians
for the Prevention of Nuclear War has remarked: 'Studies conducted for
the International Chernobyl Project of the IAEA took place from January
1990 to the end of February 1991. In 1990 alone the rate of new cases
of thyroid cancer in children in The IAEA report stated however: 'The official data that were examined did not indicate a marked increase in the incidence of leukaemia or cancers ... Reported adverse health effects attributed to radiation were not substantiated either by those local studies that were adequately performed or by the studies under the Project ... The children who were examined were found to be generally healthy...' Later
independent research by the BBC has proved that the IAEA and its international
commission of experts were already in possession of all the relevant
facts at the time of the presentation of the report, including the histopathological
evidence for a marked increase in the rate of thyroid cancers. It is
alarming to ascertain that this deliberate deception of the general
public was practised by such experts as Professor Mettler, director
of the medical expert group of the International Chernobyl Project,
and other experts from the European Union and Human
consequences of the In
a 2002 report entitled 'The Human Consequences of the Chernobyl Nuclear
Accident', the UN called for an entirely new approach to helping the
millions of people impacted by the Chernobyl accident, saying that 16
years after the incident those affected remained in a state of 'chronic
dependency', with few opportunities and little control over their destinies.
The UN warned that populations in The report set out the findings of a study carried out by an international panel of experts in July-August 2001. It was commissioned by the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and UNICEF, and was supported by WHO and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). The
study emphasised the need for the recovery phase to focus attention
on two broad groups. The first group included some 100,000 to 200,000
people caught in the downward spiral. These were people who lived in
severely contaminated areas; people who had been resettled but remained
unemployed; and those whose health remained most directly threatened,
including victims of thyroid cancer. Some 2,000 people had been diagnosed
with thyroid cancer, and the report stated that as many as 8,000 to
10,000 additional cases were expected to develop over the coming years.
The report stated that this group of up to 200,000 people, spread across
all three countries, were 'at the core of the cluster of problems created
by The second group identified for priority action included those whose lives had been directly and significantly affected but who were already in a position to support themselves. This group had found employment, but still must be reintegrated into society as a whole so that their ongoing needs could be addressed through the mainstream provision of services using criteria applicable to other members of society. This group included hundreds of thousands of individuals. The
report also identified a third group, encompassing millions of people,
who had been indirectly impacted by the stigma, uncertainty and fatalism
that had become associated with Conclusion Twenty-five
years on, 26 April 2011 does not mark the end of the suffering resulting
from the However,
due to further downplaying of the health consequences by organisations
linked to the nuclear establishment and the fact that the Let's
make sure that past and future suffering due to The
above is an edited extract from a detailed chronology of the Endnotes 1.
Hundreds of thousands of people, many of them military reservists, from
all over the 2.
IAEA, 'One decade after 3. UN, 'Strengthening of the coordination of humanitarian and disaster relief assistance ... regions', 1995. 4.
Der Standard Online ( 5.
A Okeanov, Belarussian Centre for Medical Technologies, 6.
Buzunov et al, 'Chernobyl NPP accident consequences cleaning up participants
in 7.
G I Lazuik et al, 'Frequency changes of inherited anomalies in the Republic
Belarus after the 8.
Greenpeace International, '
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