[Reader-list] Chernobyl death toll: 985,000, mostly from cancer

[Jeebesh]

Since we are now close to a flourishing energy economy driven by  
nuclear energy in India, it maybe be worthwhile to consider this essay.

warmly
jeebesh


<http://www.opednews.com/articles/1/New-Book-Concludes-Cherno-by-Karl-Grossman-100902-941.html 
 >

New Book Concludes: Chernobyl death toll: 985,000, mostly from cancer

Karl Grossman

This past April 26th marked the 24th anniversary of the Chernobyl
nuclear plant accident. It came as the nuclear industry and
pro-nuclear government officials in the United States and other
nations were trying to "revive" nuclear power. And it followed the
publication of a book, the most comprehensive study ever made, on the
impacts of the Chernobyl disaster.

Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the
Environment was published by the New York Academy of Sciences. It is
authored by three noted scientists:

Russian biologist Dr. Alexey Yablokov, former environmental advisor to
the Russian president; Dr. Alexey Nesterenko, a biologist and
ecologist in Belarus; and Dr.Vassili Nesterenko, a physicist and at
the time of the accident director of the Institute of Nuclear Energy
of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus. Its editor is Dr.
Janette Sherman, a physician and toxicologist long-involved in
studying the health impacts of radioactivity.


The book is solidly based--on health data, radiological surveys and
scientific reports--some 5,000 in all.


It concludes that based on records now available, some 985,000 people
died, mainly of cancer, as a result of theChernobyl accident. That is
between when the accident occurred in 1986 and 2004. More deaths, it
projects, will follow.
The book explodes the claim of the International Atomic Energy
Agency--still on its website that the expected death toll from the
Chernobyl accident will be 4,000. The IAEA, the new book shows, is
underestimating, to the extreme, the casualties of Chernobyl.

Alice Slater, representative in New York of the Nuclear Age Peace
Foundation, comments: "The tragic news uncovered by the comprehensive
new research that almost one million people died in the toxic
aftermath of Chernobyl should be a wake-up call to people all over the
world to petition their governments to put a halt to the current
industry-driven "nuclear renaissance.' Aided by a corrupt IAEA, the
world has been subjected to a massive cover-up and deception about the
true damages caused by Chernobyl."

Further worsening the situation, she said, has been "the collusive
agreement between the IAEA and the World Health Organization in which
the WHO is precluded from publishing any research on radiation effects
without consultation with the IAEA." WHO, the public health arm of the
UN, has supported the IAEA's claim that 4,000 will die as a result of
the accident.

"How fortunate," said Ms. Slater, "that independent scientists have
now revealed the horrific costs of the Chernobyl accident."

The book also scores the position of the IAEA, set up through the UN
in 1957 "to accelerate and enlarge the contribution of atomic energy,"
and its 1959 agreement with WHO. There is a "need to change," it says,
the IAEA-WHO pact. It has muzzled the WHO, providing for the "hiding"
from the "public of any information"unwanted" by the nuclear industry.

"An important lesson from the Chernobyl experience is that experts and
organizations tied to the nuclear industry have dismissed and ignored
the consequences of the catastrophe," it states.

The book details the spread of radioactive poisons following the
explosion of Unit 4 of the Chernobyl nuclear plant on April 26, 1986.
These major releases only ended when the fire at the reactor was
brought under control in mid-May. Emitted were "hundreds of millions
of curies, a quantity hundreds of times larger than the fallout from
the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki." The most
extensive fall-out occurred in regions closest to the plant--in the
Ukraine (the reactor was 60 miles from Kiev in Ukraine), Belarus and
Russia.

However, there was fallout all over the world as the winds kept
changing direction "so the radioactive emissions"covered an enormous
territory."

The radioactive poisons sent billowing from the plant into the air
included Cesium-137, Plutonium, Iodine-131 and Strontium-90.

There is a breakdown by country, highlighted by maps, of where the
radionuclides fell out. Beyond Ukraine, Belarus and Russia, the
countries included Bulgaria, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy,
Poland, Sweden and the United Kingdom. The radiological measurements
show that some 10% of Chernobyl poisons "fell on Asia"Huge areas" of
eastern Turkey and central China "were highly contaminated," reports
the book. Northwestern Japan was impacted, too.
Northern Africa was hit with "more than 5% of all Chernobyl releases."
The finding of Cesium-137 and both Plutonium-239 and Plutonium-240 "in
accumulated Nile River sediment is evidence of significant Chernobyl
contamination," it states.

"Areas of North America were contaminated from the first, most
powerful explosion, which lifted a cloud of radionuclides to a height
of more than 10 km. Some 1% of all Chernobyl nuclides," says the book,
"fell on North America."

The consequences on public health are extensively analyzed. Medical
records involving children--the young, their cells more rapidly
multiplying, are especially affected by radioactivity--are considered.
Before the accident, more than 80% of the children in the territories
of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia extensively contaminated by Chernobyl
"were healthy," the book reports, based on health data. But "today
fewer than 20% are well."

There is an examination of genetic impacts with records reflecting an
increase in "chromosomal aberrations" wherever there was fallout. This
will continue through the "children of irradiated parents for as many
as seven generations." So "the genetic consequences of the Chernobyl
catastrophe will impact hundreds of millions of people."

As to deaths, the list of countries and consequences begins with
Belarus. "For the period 1900-2000 cancer mortality in Belarus
increased 40%," it states, again based on medical data and illuminated
by tables in the book. "The increase was a maximum in the most highly
contaminated Gomel Province and lower in the less contaminated Brest
and Mogilev provinces." They include childhood cancers, thyroid
cancer, leukemia and other cancers.

Considering health data of people in all nations impacted by the
fallout, the "overall mortality for the period from April 1986 to the
end of 2004 from the Chernobyl catastrophe was estimated as 985,000
additional deaths."
Further, "the concentrations" of some of the poisons, because they
have radioactive half-lives ranging from 20,000 to 200,000 years,
"will remain practically the same virtually forever."

The book also examines the impact on plants and animals. "Immediately
after the catastrophe, the frequency of plant mutations in the
contaminated territories increased sharply."

There are photographs of some of these plant mutations. "Chernobyl
irradiation has caused many structural anomalies and tumorlike changes
in many plant species and has led to genetic disorders, sometimes
continuing for many years," it says. "Twenty-three years after the
catastrophe it is still too early to know if the whole spectrum of
plant radiogenic changes has been discerned. We are far from knowing
all of the consequences for flora resulting from the catastrophe."

As to animals, the book notes "serious increases in morbidity and
mortality that bear striking resemblance to changes in the public
health of humans--increasing tumor rates, immunodeficiencies, and
decreasing life expectancy."

In one study it is found that "survival rates of barn swallows in the
most contaminated sites near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant are
close to zero. In areas of moderate contamination, annual survival is
less than 25%." Research is cited into ghastly abnormalities in barn
swallows that do hatch: "two heads, two tails."

"In 1986," the book states, "the level of irradiation in plants and
animals in Western Europe, North America, the Arctic, and eastern Asia
were sometimes hundreds and even thousands of times above acceptable
norms."

In its final chapter, the book declares that the explosion of the
Chernobyl nuclear plant "was the worst technogenic accident in
history." And it examines "obstacles" to the reporting of the true
consequences of Chernobyl with a special focus on "organizations
associated with the nuclear industry" that "protect the industry
first--not the public." Here, the IAEA and WHO are charged.

The book ends by quoting U.S. President John F. Kennedy's call in 1963
for an end of atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons."The Chernobyl
catastrophe," it declares, "demonstrates that the nuclear industry's
willingness to risk the health of humanity and our environment with
nuclear power plants will result, not only theoretically, but
practically, in the same level of hazard as nuclear weapons."

Dr. Sherman, speaking of the IAEA's and WHO's dealing with the impacts
of Chernobyl, commented: "It's like Dracula guarding the blood bank."
The 1959 agreement under which WHO "is not to be independent of the
IAEA" but must clear any information it obtains on issues involving
radioactivity with the IAEA has put "the two in bed together."

Of her reflections on 14 months editing the book, she said: "Every
single system that was studied--whether human or wolves or livestock
or fish or trees or mushrooms or bacteria--all were changed, some of
them irreversibly. The scope of the damage is stunning."

In his foreword, Dr. Dimitro Grodzinsky, chairman of the Ukranian
National Commission on Radiation Protection, writes about how
"apologists of nuclear power" sought to hide the real impacts of the
Chernobyl disaster from the time when the accident occurred. The book
"provides the largest and most complete collection of data concerning
the negative consequences of Chernobyl on the health of people and the
environment...The main conclusion of the book is that it is impossible
and wrong "to forget Chernobyl.'"

In the record of Big Lies, the claim of the IAEA-WHO that "only" 4,000
people will die as a result of the Chernobyl catastrophe is among the
biggest. The Chernobyl accident is, as the new book documents, an
ongoing global catastrophe.

And it is a clear call for no new nuclear power plants to be built and
for the closing of the dangerous atomic machines now running--and a
switch to safe energy technologies, now available, led by solar and
wind energy, that will not leave nearly a million people dead from one
disaster.
--
Peace Is Doable
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