[ RadSafe ] Chernobyl Radiation Killed Nearly One MillionPeople: New Book

Tue Apr 27 19:31:25 CDT 2010

Suggest that each of you contact the New York Academy of Sciences - they
should not be putting out fiction.  Also contact Jim Crabtree of
Environmental News Services (Jim Crabtree [editor at ens-news.com])

Roger

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Stewart Farber" <radproject at sbcglobal.net>
To: "Clayton J Bradt" <CJB01 at health.state.ny.us>
Cc: <radsafe at health.phys.iit.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, April 27, 2010 4:09 PM
Subject: Re: [ RadSafe ] Chernobyl Radiation Killed Nearly One
MillionPeople: New Book

> This referenced book ["Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for
> People and the  Environment ]"is so out of touch with the balanced
> scientific realities of the impacts of the Chernobyl accident that it is
> simultaneously humorous and sad.  This kind of book is part of an
> anti-nuclear feeding frenzy which tends to cite claims by other
> anti-nuclear authors and interests in an attempt to bootstrap some absurd
> claim to a ludicrous end point.  And what is the NY Academy of Sciences
> doing being connected with a book that is essentially scientifically
> illiterate, and in the end.  largely a work of cleverly distorted fiction?
>
> For example the review mentioning this book notes  that the book claims
> that the"Radiation and Public Health Project found that in the early
> 1990s, a
> few years after the meltdown, thyroid cancer in Connecticut children
> had nearly doubled.".
>
> This claim [and dozens of similar claims about radiation bioeffects] has
> been totally discredited by the CT Dept. of Health and every other
> impartial agency which has looked at the substance of the claims made. The
> RPHP is a group of long-standing[dis]repute which runs the "Tooth Fairy
> Project",  discussed ad nauseum on Radsafe over a period of years. If you
> want a bit of diversion take a look at a photo of  RPHP Technical
> Specialist, Board Member, and spokesperson Christie Brinkley with NY
> Governor Patterson in a recent meeting in Southampton, NY at the link
> below,  or links to articles by RPHP spokesperson Alec Baldwin who
> provides substantial financial support  the RPHP. See:
>
> http://www.radiation.org/
>
> Ernest Sternglass and Joseph Mangano, the RPHP's current director have
> made a career out of cherry picking data and making absurd claims
> unsupported by actual extant public health records and statistics. Time
> and again these "researchers" have chosen data that supported their
> claims, and ignored data which did not.  Their "startling" findings are
> designed to deceive the public, legislators, and regulators, and
> scientifically illiterate notables like Brinkley and Baldwin who can't see
> how laughable their claims are, or appreciate that claims by activists
> like E. Sternglass and  RPHP Sternglass wannabes have been completely
> discredited by competent, independent scientific organizations like the US
> National Academy of Sciences and dozens of State Public Health
> Departments, the Health Physics Society, DOE, EPA, etc., etc.
>
> The book author's use of 5,000 references mostly in Slavic makes it
> convenient to make claims that are difficult to evaluate. However, the
> author's giving credence to reports issued by RPHP in the US show that the
> authors can't judge whether data they are citing has any scientific merit,
> or don't care if it does.
>
> I was hired to perform a very rigorous review of environmental radiation
> data gathered after the Chernobyl accident as part of comprehensive
> nuclear plant environmental monitoring programs from all over New England
> in 1986 and 1987. As a minor aside, the recently published book's
> statement that activity from Chernobyl took 7 days to reach the US in
> circling the globe is inaccurate in that some initial fallout from the
> Chernobyl accident took less than 3 days to come over the N. Pole to US
> based on low levels of I-131 seen in milk collected in Vermont a few days
> after the accident--but that's another story.
>
> In the US, the Chernobyl accident in total added less than 1% to the
> preexisting nuclear weapons test radioactive contamination from Cs-137 and
> even less from Sr-90. If the claims of the book in question were close to
> being true, applying the linear hypothesis to the much greater worldwide
> environmental rad contamination from the period of open-air testing by the
> US and Soviet Union vs. Chernobyl would have been responsible for many,
> many hundreds of millions of deaths from cancer. And medical radiation
> exposure, and background radiation would essentially have killed off the
> entire population of the earth.
>
> Time after time, wisdom is seen in the observation made long ago by
> British Historian and writer Dr. C. Northcote Parkinson:
>
> The Law of Triviality... briefly stated, it means that the time
> spent on any item of the agenda will be in inverse proportion to the sum
> involved.
> C. Northcote Parkinson
>
> ========
> [ i.e.: the less important, and insignificant vs. the total of any factor
> that an item really is, the more time devoted to it in any situation ]
>
> This is seen in that medical and background radiation, per NCRP 160, are
> each responsible for about 3 mSv annually to each member of the US
> population on average. Based on the LNTH, these can together be
> responsible, conservatively, for no more than 15 percent of overall cancer
> mortality.
>
> Per NCRP 160 Consumer products contribute about 0.1 mSv per year and might
> be responsible for roughly 0.3 percent of overall cancer mortality.
> Nuclear power plant operations contribute less than 2% of consumer product
> exposure or 0.002 mSv per person, and could at a maximum be responsible,
> assuming the LNTH actually applies, for about 0.003 percent of overall
> cancer mortality.
>
> So if you look at the above levels of radiation exposures per NCRP 160 and
> the maximum contribution of each component to overall cancer mortality,
> the truth of "Parkinsons Law of Triviality" is clearly seen. These authors
> focus the most on the risks of the least important sources of population
> radiation exposure.
>
> ===========
> Brief bio on C. Northcote Parkinson:  (born July 30, 1909, Barnard Castle,
> Durham, Eng. — died March 9, 1993,
> Canterbury, Kent) British historian and writer. He received a Ph.D. from
> Kings College, London, and later taught at various schools in England
> and Malaya. He is most famous for his 1955 formulation of the satiric
> "Parkinson's Law," which stated that "Work expands to fill the time
> available for its completion." In The Law and the Profits (1960) he
> discussed a second law, "Expenditure rises to meet income."
>
>
>
> Stewart Farber, MSPH
> Farber Medical Solutions, LLC
> Bridgeport, CT 06604
>
>
> [203] 441-8433 [o]
> website: http://www.farber-medical.com
> ================
>
>
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: Clayton J Bradt <CJB01 at health.state.ny.us>
> To: radsafe at health.phys.iit.edu
> Sent: Tue, April 27, 2010 10:25:48 AM
> Subject: [ RadSafe ] Chernobyl Radiation Killed Nearly One Million People:
> New Book
>
>
>
> An interesting new book just out on Chernobyl.
>
> Clayton J. Bradt
> dutchbradt at hughes.net
>
>
> ******************************************
>
>
> Chernobyl Radiation Killed Nearly One Million People: New Book
>
>
>
> NEW YORK, New York, April 26, 2010 (ENS) - Nearly one million people
> around
> the world died from exposure to radiation released by the 1986 nuclear
> disaster at the Chernobyl reactor, finds a new book from the New York
> Academy of Sciences published today on the 24th anniversary of the
> meltdown
> at the Soviet facility.
>
>
>
> The book, "Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the
> Environment," was compiled by authors Alexey Yablokov of the Center for
> Russian Environmental Policy in Moscow, and Vassily Nesterenko and Alexey
> Nesterenko of the Institute of Radiation Safety, in Minsk, Belarus.
>
>
> The authors examined more than 5,000 published articles and studies, most
> written in Slavic languages and never before available in English.
>
>
> The authors said, "For the past 23 years, it has been clear that there is
> a
> danger greater than nuclear weapons concealed within nuclear power.
> Emissions from this one reactor exceeded a hundred-fold the radioactive
> contamination of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki."
>
>
> "No citizen of any country can be assured that he or she can be protected
> from radioactive contamination. One nuclear reactor can pollute half the
> globe," they said. "Chernobyl fallout covers the entire Northern
> Hemisphere."
>
>
> Their findings are in contrast to estimates by the World Health
> Organization and the International Atomic Energy Agency that initially
> said
> only 31 people had died among the "liquidators," those approximately
> 830,000 people who were in charge of extinguishing the fire at the
> Chernobyl reactor and deactivation and cleanup of the site.
>
>
> The book finds that by 2005, between 112,000 and 125,000 liquidators had
> died.
>
>
> "On this 24th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, we now realize that
> the consequences were far worse than many researchers had believed," says
> Janette Sherman, MD, the physician and toxicologist who edited the book.
>
>
> Drawing upon extensive data, the authors estimate the number of deaths
> worldwide due to Chernobyl fallout from 1986 through 2004 was 985,000, a
> number that has since increased.
>
>
> By contrast, WHO and the IAEA estimated 9,000 deaths and some 200,000
> people sickened in 2005.
>
>
> On April 26, 1986, two explosions occured at reactor number four at the
> Chernobyl plant which tore the top from the reactor and its building and
> exposed the reactor core. The resulting fire sent a plume of radioactive
> fallout into the atmosphere and over large parts of the western Soviet
> Union, Europe and across the Northern Hemisphere. Large areas in Ukraine,
> Belarus, and Russia had to be evacuated.
>
>
> Yablokov and his co-authors find that radioactive emissions from the
> stricken reactor, once believed to be 50 million curies, may have been as
> great as 10 billion curies, or 200 times greater than the initial
> estimate,
> and hundreds of times larger than the fallout from the atomic bombs
> dropped
> on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
>
>
> Nations outside the former Soviet Union received high doses of radioactive
> fallout, most notably Norway, Sweden, Finland, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria,
> Austria, Romania, Greece, and parts of the United Kingdom and Germany.
>
>
> About 550 million Europeans, and 150 to 230 million others in the Northern
> Hemisphere received notable contamination. Fallout reached the United
> States and Canada nine days after the disaster.
>
>
> The proportion of children considered healthy born to irradiated parents
> in
> Belarus, the Ukraine, and European Russia considered healthy fell from
> about 80 percent to less than 20 percent since 1986.
>
>
> Numerous reports reviewed for this book document elevated disease rates in
> the Chernobyl area. These include increased fetal and infant deaths, birth
> defects, and diseases of the respiratory, digestive, musculoskeletal,
> nervous, endocrine, reproductive, hematological, urological,
> cardiovascular, genetic, immune, and other systems, as well as cancers and
> non-cancerous tumors.
>
>
> In addition to adverse effects in humans, numerous other species have been
> contaminated, based upon studies of livestock, voles, birds, fish, plants,
> trees, bacteria, viruses, and other species.
>
>
> Foods produced in highly contaminated areas in the former Soviet Union
> were
> shipped, and consumed worldwide, affecting persons in many other nations.
> Some, but not all, contamination was detected and contaminated foods not
> shipped.
>
>
> The authors warn that the soil, foliage, and water in highly contaminated
> areas still contain substantial levels of radioactive chemicals, and will
> continue to harm humans for decades to come.
>
>
> The book explores effects of Chernobyl fallout that arrived above the
> United States nine days after the disaster. Fallout entered the U.S.
> environment and food chain through rainfall. Levels of iodine-131 in milk,
> for example, were seven to 28 times above normal in May and June 1986. The
> authors found that the highest U.S. radiation levels were recorded in the
> Pacific Northwest.
>
>
> Americans also consumed contaminated food imported from nations affected
> by
> the disaster. Four years later, 25 percent of imported food was found to
> be
> still contaminated.
>
>
> Little research on Chernobyl health effects in the United States has been
> conducted, the authors found, but one study by the Radiation and Public
> Health Project found that in the early 1990s, a few years after the
> meltdown, thyroid cancer in Connecticut children had nearly doubled.
>
>
> This occurred at the same time that childhood thyroid cancer rates in the
> former Soviet Union were surging, as the thyroid gland is highly sensitive
> to radioactive iodine exposures.
>
>
> The world now has 435 nuclear reactors and of these, 104 are in the United
> States.
>
>
> The New York Academy of Sciences says not enough attention has been paid
> to
> Eastern European research studies on the effects of Chernobyl at a time
> when corporations in several nations, including the United States, are
> attempting to build more nuclear reactors and to extend the years of
> operation of aging reactors.
>
>
> The academy said in a statement, "Official discussions from the
> International Atomic Energy Agency and associated United Nations' agencies
> (e.g. the Chernobyl Forum reports) have largely downplayed or ignored many
> of the findings reported in the Eastern European scientific literature and
> consequently have erred by not including these assessments."
>
>
> To obtain the book from the New York Academy of Sciences, click here.
>
>
>    Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2010. All rights reserved.
> _______________________________________________
> You are currently subscribed to the RadSafe mailing list
>
> Before posting a message to RadSafe be sure to have read and understood
> the RadSafe rules. These can be found at:
> http://health.phys.iit.edu/radsaferules.html
>
> For information on how to subscribe or unsubscribe and other settings
> visit: http://health.phys.iit.edu
>