[ RadSafe ] Article: Chernobyl: poverty and stress pose 'bigger threat' than radiation

[John Jacobus]

This article is from news at nature.com at
http://www.nature.com/news/2005/050905/full/437181b.html

---------------------
Nature
Published online: 7 September 2005

Chernobyl: poverty and stress pose 'bigger threat'
than radiation

Local communities suffer many effects of fall-out.

Valeska Stephan

Cancer from radiation may not be Chernobyl's biggest
killer.

The Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986 will lead to
far fewer deaths than originally thought, according to
a report from the United Nations.

Some 4,000 people — including emergency workers and
residents of the most contaminated areas — could
eventually die of factors linked to radiation
exposure, the report says. Earlier estimates had
ranged widely but regularly suggested that there could
be many tens of thousands of deaths (see 
Nature 351, 4; 199110.1038/351004b0).

"The effects on public health were not nearly as
substantial as had at first been feared," says Michael
Repacholi, head of the radiation programme 
at the World Health Organization in Geneva.

Repacholi was among more than 100 scientists,
economists and health experts
who worked on the 600-page document, which aimed to
summarize the available scientific data on the
accident and the countries most affected by it: 
the Ukraine, Belarus and Russia. The report was due to
be released by the Chernobyl Forum at a meeting in
Vienna this week.

On 26 April 1986, one of four reactors at the
Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Ukraine suffered
a series of explosions and a meltdown — the worst
nuclear accident in history. Radioactive fallout
contaminated more than 200,000 square kilometres of
Europe, leading to the eventual relocation of
more than 350,000 people.

So far, the report says, fewer than 50 deaths have
been directly attributed to radiation exposure —
most of them rescue workers who died of acute
radiation syndrome shortly after the disaster. The
authors estimate that the incidence of
radiation-induced cancer rose by only about 3% in the
affected
areas. 

They add that the thousands of children who contracted
thyroid cancer after the accident are likely to have a
99% survival rate, higher than the 80−85%
previously thought.

Poverty and mental-health problems, such as stress,
depression and anxiety, pose a much greater threat to
the local communities than radiation, the report
concludes. It argues that future aid should focus on
improving the healthcare system and promoting local
economic development.

Story from news at nature.com:
http://news.nature.com//news/2005/050905/437181b.html 
  
© 2004 Nature Publishing Group



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"Every now and then a man's mind is stretched by a new idea and never shrinks back to its original proportion." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

-- John
John Jacobus, MS
Certified Health Physicist
e-mail:  crispy_bird at yahoo.com


		
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