Chernobyl kills and cripples 14 years after blast

["Sandy Perle" <sandyfl@earthlink.net>]

Chernobyl kills and cripples 14 years after blast

KIEV (Reuters) - Fourteen years after the world's worst nuclear 
disaster, the Chernobyl power plant is still killing people, Ukraine's 
Health Ministry said Friday. 

Some 3.5 million people, more than a third of them children, have 
fallen ill as a result of the contamination while the incidence of 
some cancers is 10 times the national average. 

``The health of people affected by the Chernobyl accident is getting 
worse and worse every year,'' Deputy Health Minister Olha 
Bobyleva told a news conference. ``We are very disturbed by these 
data.'' 

Chernobyl's number four reactor exploded in the early hours of April 
26, 1986, spreading a poisonous radioactive cloud over much of 
Ukraine, Russia, Belarus and parts of Western Europe. 

Soviet officials, who initially tried to hush up the tragedy, 
acknowledged in the end that the accident had killed 31 people and 
affected thousands more. 

SCALE OF TRAGEDY GREATER THAN THOUGHT 

But the real scale of the catastrophe, which displaced hundreds of 
thousands of people and turned bustling villages and towns into 
ghost towns populated only by stray dogs and crows, has turned 
out to be far greater than once thought. 

Official data show that the health of some 3.5 million people, 
including 1.26 million children, was affected in this impoverished 
nation of 50 million. 

Children and also emergency workers sent in to clean up the 
contaminated areas are among the worst affected. 

The death rate among those living in contaminated areas is 18.28 
percent per 1,000, compared to a national average of 14.8 percent. 

Bobyleva said high radiation had led to an outbreak of diseases of 
the nervous, blood and respiratory systems. She said the number 
of these diseases among children affected by the accident was 17 
percent higher than the national average. 

The rate of thyroid cancer remains 10 times higher than normal 
among Ukrainian children. The ministry reported 1,400 cases of 
thyroid cancer between 1986 and 2000, while no cases were 
registered between 1981 and 1985. 

Bobyleva said the ministry was particularly worried by an increase 
in deaths of emergency workers, popularly called ``liquidators,'' 
most of whom are still under 50. The death rate in the group is 
double the national average. 

She said the consumption of radioactive food produced in the 
country's most contaminated northern and central regions of Kiev, 
Chernihiv, Zhytomyr, Cherkassy and Rivne posed another danger 
for public health. 

A lack of cash and other economic problems have further 
complicated the situation. Cash-strapped Ukraine has spent $1.4 
billion to date to fight the consequences of the accident. 

Ukraine has promised it will close Chernobyl's last operational 
reactor by the end of this year. 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sandy Perle					Tel:(714) 545-0100 / (800) 548-5100   				    	
Director, Technical				Extension 2306 				     	
ICN Worldwide Dosimetry Division		Fax:(714) 668-3149 	                   		    
ICN Biomedicals, Inc.				E-Mail: sandyfl@earthlink.net 				                           
ICN Plaza, 3300 Hyland Avenue  		E-Mail: sperle@icnpharm.com          	          
Costa Mesa, CA 92626

Personal Website:  http://www.geocities.com/capecanaveral/1205
ICN Worldwide Dosimetry Website: http://www.dosimetry.com
************************************************************************
The RADSAFE Frequently Asked Questions list, archives and subscription
information can be accessed at http://www.ehs.uiuc.edu/~rad/radsafe.html