Chernobyl study of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC)

["Franta, Jaroslav" <frantaj@aecl.ca>]

this, from the Greenpeace web site....

http://www.greenpeace.org/~nuclear/reactor/chernbrief.html
Berlin, April 20th, 2000
Briefing Paper On the 14th anniversary of the Chernobyl catastrophe (26th
April 2000)

Chernobyl: Over 50,000 Thyroid cancer cases in Gomel region / Belarus
expected
There will be more than 50,000 cases of thyroid cancer caused by the
Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe in the most contaminated region around Gomel
among those who were children of the age of 0-4 when the catastrophe
occurred. This is the result of a recent study of the International Agency
for Research on Cancer (IARC) at Lyon / France, a part of the World Health
Organisation (WHO). 
The EU-financed study speaks of a "dramatic increase in thyroid cancer"
observed among those who were children and lived in territories contaminated
by fall-out from the Chernobyl accident. Predictions of risk over life were
made using age and sex-specific thyroid cancer rates from England and Wales
as baseline and a multiplicative "relative risk" model. The result is an
increase from 157 (1997) to 51,345 cases of thyroid cancer over the lifetime
of those exposed as children to the radioactive fallout for the Gomel
region. This means that 36.4% of the 141,068 Belorussians, who were between
0-4 years old and in the Gomel region when Chernobyl happened and who are
now between 14 and 18 years old, will receive thyroid cancer in their
lifetime. The basis for this pessimistic calculation is the fact, that "the
discrepancies between the observed and expected numbers is outstanding,
particularly in Gomel region, where the number of cases is at least ten
times higher than the predictions". Less dramatic, but still very worrying
are the results from the neighboring Mogilev region where, the study
predicts, 5,023 cases of thyroid cancer or 5.0% of the population of the
Mogilev region of the relevant age.
These figures represent only the latest results of research on the
consequences of the Chernobyl catastrophe. Other consequences include; other
kinds of cancer (e.g. leukaemia), thyroid disfunctions (without cancer) and
damage to the immunity system among thousands of people not only in the
Gomel and Mogilev region, but also in other regions of Belarus, in Ukraine
and in Russia as well as the 600,000 "liquidators". The "liquidators" are
those people who worked at Chernobyl in 1986/87 to limit the consequences of
the catastrophe and to construct the "sarcophagus" over what was left of
Chernobyl's reactor No.4. Apart from the tragedy of deaths and diseases as a
consequence of the Chernobyl disaster, Balarus, Ukraine and Russia have had
to cope with the severe social and economic consequences of Chernobyl. More
than 350,000 people had to leave their homes and to find space and work in
other parts of their countries. The economic damage of Chernobyl to these
countries is in the tens of billion of dollars. 

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