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Victims of the Nuclear Age



Fellow RADSAFE colleagues -

Found the following e-mail (including Dr. Bertell's e-mail address) on the DOEWatch mailing list. Thought y'all would be interested.

Jim Hardeman
Jim_Hardeman@mail.dnr.state.ga.us


On Thu, 13 Jul 2000 22:20:57 +0100 Viviane Lerner <vlerner@interpac.net> wrote:





To:               <du-list@eGroups.com>

From:             "Rosalie Bertell, Ph.D., GNSH" <drrbertell@home.com>

Date sent:        Sat, 1 Jul 2000 15:08:13 -0400 Send reply to:   

du-list@egroups.com Subject:          [du-list] Fw: Article

 boundary="----=_NextPart_000_0039_01BFE36E.2D43F7C0"



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Dear Friends,



A corrected version of my estimate of nuclear victims since 1946 (not

including the horrendous destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki) can be

found on the web: www.ambassadors.net/opinions_nuclear.htm

or enclosed as an attachment (RTF).  The conservative estimate is 1.2

billion victims (cancers, genetic and teratogenic damage).  I was

unable to include the Gulf War vets because they are not yet

acknowledged by UNSCEAR, so were not included in the Person Sievert

doses estimated by UNSCEAR.



Amazing to realize that this damage has occurred without there being a

nuclear war!



Rosalie Bertell





<><><><><>

Victims of the Nuclear Age





"VICTIMS OF THE NUCLEAR AGE"  Up to 1,300 million people have been

killed, maimed or diseased by nuclear power since it's inception. The

industry's figures massively underestimate the real cost of nuclear

power, in an attempt to hide its victims from the world. Here, the

author calculates the real number of victims of the nuclear age. By

Dr. Rosalie Bertell





On the tenth anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, I was standing at

a public meeting in Kiev, Ukraine, listening to the story of one of

the firemen employed to clean up the site after the explosion. These

workers took huge doses of radiation during this task, and their story

is a terrifying one. About 600,000 men were conscripted as Chernobyl

'liquidators' [also called bio-robots']: farmers, factory workers,

miners, and soldiers, as well as professionals like the firemen, from

all across Russia. Some of these men lifted pieces of radioactive

metal with their bare hands. They had to fight more than 300 fires

created by the chunks of burning material spewed off by the inferno.

After the fire was put out, they buried trucks, fire engines, cars and

all sorts of personal belongings. They felled a forest and completely

buried it, removed topsoil, bulldozed houses and filled all available

clay-lined trenches with radioactive debris. 



The minimum conscription time was 180 days, but many stayed for a

year. Some were threatened with severe punishment to their families if

they failed to stay and do their duty.



These 'liquidators' are now discarded and forgotten, many vainly

trying to establish that the ill health most have suffered ever since

1986 is a result of their massive exposure to radiation. At the Centre

for Radiation Research outside Kiev, there is an organization of

former liquidators. This group reports that by 1995, 13,000 of their

members had died- almost 20 percent of which deaths were suicides.

About 70,000 members were estimated to be permanently disabled. But

the members of this organization are the lucky ones. Because many

former liquidators are now scattered throughout Russia, they neither

have the benefit of the organization's special hospital, nor of

membership of a survivor organization. They are known as the 'living

dead.'



The fireman whose story I was listening to seemed to be an exception

to this grim litany of illness and death. He was telling the meeting

how pleased and excited he was that, for the first time in ten years,

his blood test findings were in the normal range. I was standing next

to a delegate from the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA]- the

organisation charged with promoting the use of atomic energy. On

hearing the fireman's story, he leaned over to me and said: "You see!

We said these were only transient disorders".  A rough translation of

which might read: "Chernobyl? What's the  problem?"



IGNORING THE VICTIMS



The IAEA delegate's attitude was perfectly in keeping with that of his

organization which, along with the International Commission on

Radiological Protection [ICRP] exists in practice largely to play down

the effects of radiation on human health, and to shield the nuclear

industry from compensation claims from workers and the public. The

IAEA was set up in the late 1950s by he UN, to prevent the spread of

nuclear weapons and to promote the peaceful use of atomic energy-

ironically, two contradictory objectives. The ICRP which evolved from

the 1928 physician's organization, International Committee on X-Ray

and Radium Protection, was set up in the nineteen fifties to explore

the health effects of radiation and [theoretically] to protect the

public from it. In fact, both organizations have come to serve the

industry rather than the public.



The Chernobyl case is a classic example of the IAEA's inadequacy and

questionable science. Despite massive evidence to the contrary, not

least from the many thousands of victims themselves, the IAEA insists

that only 32 people have so far died as a result of Chernobyl- those

who died in the radiation ward of Hospital six in Moscow. All other

deaths related to the disaster and its aftermath [and there have been

many more than 10,000 in Ukraine alone according to the Minister of

Health there] are ignored. Belarus had the highest fallout, and yet

there is an international blackout among the IAEA and the rest of the

"radiation protection community" on the suffering of its people.



The essential problem is that both the IAEA and the ICRP are dealing

not with science but with politics and administration;  not with

public health but with maintaining an increasingly dubious industry.

It is their interests, and those of the nuclear industry, to play down

the health effects of radiation.



RESTRICTIVE DEFINITIONS



The main way in which the  radiation protection industry  has

succeeded in hugely underrating the ill-health caused by nuclear power

is by insisting on a group of extremely restrictive definitions as to

what qualifies as a radiation-caused illness. For example, under

IAEA's criteria:



C	If a radiation-caused cancer is not fatal, it is not counted in the

IAEA's figures



C	If a cancer is initiated by another carcenogen, but accelerated or

promoted by exposure to radiation, it is not counted.



C	If an auto-immune disease or any non-cancer is caused by radiation,

it is not counted.



C	Radiation-damaged embryos or foetuses which result in miscarriage or

stillbirth do not count



C	A congenitally blind, deaf or malformed child whose illnesses are

radiation-related are not included in the figures because this is not

genetic damage, but rather is teratogenic, and will not be passed on

later to the child's offspring.



C	Causing the genetic predisposition to breast cancer or heart disease

does not count since it is not a "serious genetic disease" in the

Mendelian sense.



C	Even if radiation causes a fatal cancer in any one or serious

genetic disease in a live born infant, it is discounted if the

estimated radiation dose is below 100 mSv [mSv means millisievert,a

measurement of radiation exposure. A nuclear worker is permitted

between 20 and 50 mSv per year.]



C	Even if radiation causes a lung cancer, it does not count if the

person smokes- in fact whenever there is a possibility of another

cause, radiation cannot be blamed.



If all else fails, it is possible to average over the whole body the

radiation dose which has actually been received by only one part of

the body or even one organ, as for instance when radio-iodine

concentrates in the thyroid. This arbitrary dilution of the dose will

ensure that the 100 mSv cut-off point is not reached. 



This is the technique used to dismiss the sickness of Gulf War

veterans who inhaled small particles of ceramic uranium which stayed

in their lungs for more than two years, and in their bodies for more

than eight years, irradiating and damaging cells in  a particular part

of the body.



THE REAL VICTIMS



Despite the authorities' attempt at concealment, we can still begin to

enumerate the real victims of the nuclear age. Although the

calculations and statistics which I have brought to bear below do not

include all of the human suffering that has been caused by the nuclear

age, a closer look will show that the methodology is adequate for a

first estimate of major damage. The magnitude of the harm already

caused is startling, and even more so when we realise many types of

damage have been omitted from this first estimate.



My estimate of radiation damage,  induced cancer, whether fatal or

non-fatal [excluding non-fatal skin cancer], genetic damage and

serious congenital malformations and diseases will be included in the

figures. Other lesser human damage is acknowledged but not estimated. 



The nuclear industry uses the word "detriment" for the radiation

damage which it considers to be important.  I have broadened that

list.  Ultimately, whether or not one cares about the damage caused by

radiation exposure, i.e. refers to it as "detriment",  is  a human,

not a scientific question. Damage is damage, and causing an unwanted

attack on someone's person or reproductive capacity is a violation of

human rights. Such damage can be rated for importance, but it should

not be arbitrarily ignored. 



"Statistics are the people with the tears wiped away" stated one of

the Rongelap people of the Republic of the Marshall Islands, who

'hosted' the United States Bikini nuclear testing in the 1950s. This

is the story of many tears, and of a hard hearted mindset that laid

down the degree of suffering  and ill-health that would be the

'acceptable' price to pay for the world 'benefitting' from nuclear

technology.



RISK ESTIMATES USED IN THIS ANALYSIS



In order to estimate the real victims of the nuclear industry [as

oppossed to those figures enumerated by the ICRP, IAEA and other

nuclear apologists] I will take the customary risk estimates, indicate

their probable range of error, and then extend the definition to cover

related events not recognized as 'detriments' by the regulators. For

example, while the nuclear regulators only take fatal cancers into

consideration as 'detriments', others, especially those who endure a

non-fatal cancer, may find their suffering equally worthy of

consideration. And limiting genetic effects to live born offspring

does not wipe away the tears of a family that has endured a

spontaneous miscarriage or stillbirth.



ESTIMATING THE FATAL AND NON-FATAL CANCER RISKS



In 1991, the ICRP concluded that the projected lifetime risk of fatal

cancer for members of the population exposed to one Sievert whole-body

radiation at a low dose rate, was between seven and 11 excess fatal

cancers, and seven to eight excess fatalities for workers in the

nuclear industry  aged 25 to 64 years. We  extend these estimates to

non-fatal cancers by estimating the total number of cancers which were

used by the ICRP in order to obtain their number of fatalities. We

therefore estimate  16 fatal and non-fatal cancers if we exclude

non-fatal skin cancers, or 26 if we count them.  If the estimate of

fatal cancers was too low by a factor of two then we can double these

numbers.



The conservative estimate I will use for radiation induced cancer in

this analysis is 16 per 100 Person Sieverts exposure, but the reader

can adjust this estimate to suit other inclusions, exclusions or

uncertainties.



ESTIMATING DAMAGE TO AN EMBRYO OR FOETUS



According to the BEIR Committee [Bilogical Effects of Ionizing

Radiation] 1990 report, a dose of 150 mSv to human male testes will

cause temporary sterility, and a single dose of 3.5 Sv will cause

permanent sterility. According to the ICRP in 1991, just 5 mSv to the

testes could cause damage to offspring - yet this dose was permitted

yearly to members of the public, and ten times more was permitted to

nuclear workers, in all countries prior to 1990. It continues today to

be permitted yearly for nuclear workers in most countries.



Women carry with them all of the ova from birth which they will ever

have. The threshold for permanent female sterilisation decreases with

age, but in general about 650 mSv is considered to be the threshold

for temporary sterility in women.  However, after the Bravo event- the

detonation of a hydrogen bomb at the Bikini Atoll in the Pacific  in

March 1954- the women of Rongelap Atoll experienced about five years

of sterility. As they regained their fertility, they experienced

faulty pregnancies, miscarrigies, stillbirths and damage to their

offspring. Since some radionucleides can be retained in bone or fatty

tissues, they are able to cross the placenta barrier and disrupt the

developing embryo or foetus. Radionuclides in the mother's body can

also be transferred to offspring in her breast milk.



The official nuclear industry definition of 'detriment' to offspring

includes only serious genetic disease.  It eliminates damage not

judged to be serious, and all teratogenic diseases [those which are

not passed on to offspring]. For example, radiation exposure in utero

could cause a child to be blind or deaf, but that blindness or

deafness would not be passed on to the child's offspring. This would

be called teratogenic damage and not counted.   Recently the 1990 BEIR

committee  made one small concession in recognizing mental retardation

in children exposed to radiation during the fifth to 15th weeks of

their mother's pregnancy. Radiation kills brain cells, causing both an

underdeveloped brain [microcephaly] and mental retardation. For the

individual child, BEIR estimates that a dose in utero of 100 to 500

mSv can cause a range of problems from poor school performance to

severe mental retardation. This analysis considers both genetic and

teratogenic damage to be "detrimental".



GENETIC DAMAGE



The U.N. Scientific Committee on the effects of Atomic Radiation

[UNSCEAR] and BEIR both agree that a population of one million live

births, with 100 Person Sieverts exposure to parents, will result in

one to three genetic damage effects to offspring.  



One can also use a second methodology to calculate genetic damage. 

The doubling dose for genetic effects [the dose that will cause twice

as many genetic effects] is more contentious, with some geneticists

claiming that it is 2.5 Sv, and others claiming much greater

sensitivity with a 0.12 Sv doubling dose.  If the total average dose

to parents is 100 Person Sieverts, there will be 4 genetic effects per

million live births if the doubling dose is 2.5 Sv, but there will be 

83 such effects if the doubling dose is 0.12 Sv. 



On the conservative side, we have taken 10 genetic effects to be the

number of genetic effects for offspring of parents exposed to 100

Person Sieverts. ESTIMATE OF TERATOGENIC EFFECTS'



The damage to an embryo from ionizing radiation when in the womb is

not ordinarily considered to be genetic (the exception would when the

radiation damages the gentic material of the fetus). Such irradiation

can lead to some 30 different congenital anomolies including permanent

damage to the brain, mental deficiency, skull deformities, cleft

palate, spina bifida, club-feet, genital deformities, growth

retardation and childhood cancer. A total of all those effects,

including those resulting in early embryonic or fetal mortality,

amount to 46, of which 25 are in live born. I will use the

conservative estimate 25 for congenital damage in this analysis. 



When we summarise those risk estimates to be used in this analysis, we

get 16 cancers, 10 genetic effects and 25 congenital effects in life

born offspring for a mixed (age and sex) population of one million

exposed to 100 Person Sieverts of ionizing radiation. This is a total

of 51 "victims" for each 100 Person Sieverts exposure, of which 31.4%

are assumed to be cancers, 19.6% are genetically damaged and 49% were

congenitally damaged but both categories were live born.



The task now is to apply those numbers to the UNSCEAR estimate of

nuclear radiation exposure to  the global population, including

atmospheric nuclear weapons testing  and electricity production from

nuclear power over the past half century. 



The nuclear atmospheric weapon testing caused 1,138 million victims,

with an additional 3.2 million due to nuclear weapon production.  



Nuclear power has caused about 21 million victims and medical uses of

radiation have produced another 4 million victims.  There have been

both military and civilian nuclear accidents producing 16 million and

15 million more victims respectively.



This gives a grand total of 1,200 million victims of the nuclear age. 

About 1,156 are military related, 36 million are related to nuclear

reactors, and 4 million are related to medical use.



This Opinion Piece was prepared by Dr. Rosalie Bertell, President of

the International Institute of Concern for Public Health, Toronto,

Canada.



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