Re: Health consequences of USSR nuclear weapons program

["Bjorn Cedervall" <bcradsafers@hotmail.com>]

>	Can anyone recommend a short summary of the known experienced
health impacts from the USSR nuclear weapons program, such as Mayak? I
have been told that people throughout Siberia are worried about their
health being affected by the contamination released.
---
There are quite a few reports relating to the contamination of the Mayak 
area. Concerning health effects - some of the information for the "local 
area" (with this I would include the whole upper areas relating to the Tecja 
River water systems). Some of the information I have obtained has been 
unclear. There is for instance a report called:
Analysis of Chronic Radiation Sickness Cases in the Population of the 
Southern Urals, CR 94-1, AFRRI Contract Report, DNA001-92-M-0658
(Defence Nuclear Agency Contract Number), August 1994 (about 90 pages).

Another source of information is:
Applied Radiation and Isotopes, Vol. 52, Number 5, May 2000. This issue 
contains about 40 proceedings articles - many of which address questions 
relating to "radiation health & Soviet Union" (Proceedings of the 
International Conference on Biodosimetry and 5th International Symposium on 
ESR Dosimetry and Applications).

For dose estimates (based on ESR measurements in teeth (molars)) I would 
recommend that you check the publications by Alexander Romanyukha and 
coworkers in recent issues of radiation health physics oriented publications 
(Radiat Environ Biophys. 2000 Sep;39(3):161-71 is one example).

Check also the name Per Hall for keywords like Techa, Mayak, epidemiology in 
Medline.

Shilnivkova et al. have described "Cancer Risk among Workers at the 
Radiation Nuclear Complex "Mayak"" (ICRR 1999, Vol 2., Proceedings, pages 
766-769).

I can't dig more into this at the moment - just got back from the U.S. - 
jetlag - a lost suitcase I must go and "meet" and other details to take care 
of.

Best regards,

Bjorn Cedervall   bcradsafers@hotmail.com

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