Re: Chernobyl health effects

["Raymond A. Hoover" <rayhoover@hotmail.com>]

Another factor that would (in my opinion) call the 40,000 figure into 
question is that the Soviets did not keep good records as to who 
participated in the clean-up.  Even today, many verterans (in the Ukraine 
and in Russia) are being denied assistance because there is no record of 
their being at Chernobyl.

In addition, the dose records which were kept are highly questionable as to 
their accuracy.  I was told that it was common for the men sent to the roof 
to be sent up without dosemeters. They would come down off the roof to be 
told their dose was 650 mrem (650 mrem being wome kind of administrative 
limit).


>From: "Dukelow, James S Jr" <jim.dukelow@pnl.gov>
>Reply-To: radsafe@romulus.ehs.uiuc.edu
>To: Multiple recipients of list <radsafe@romulus.ehs.uiuc.edu>
>Subject: Re: Chernobyl health effects
>Date: Tue, 2 Jan 2001 16:54:59 -0600 (CST)
>
>Peter Sandgren wrote:
>
>Regarding the comment by Mr. Dukelow (from his email below) "Careful
>studies of the health consequences have not supported the "Thousands of
>people have died" statement you make." I offer this quote from the article
>entitled "Culture of Cancer" by Robert Masterson in the Hartford Advocate
>of Dec. 14-20, 2000:  "During the past decade, approximately 40,000 cleanup
>workers have died, mostly men in their 30s and 40s."  Offered from the "for
>what it's worth" department . . .
>Peter Sandgren
>Training Division
>Connecticut Office of Emergency Management
>
>Jim Dukelow responds:
>
>I read Masterson's piece, which is available at
>www.hartfordadvocate.com/articles/ukraine.html, and don't feel that it's 
>worth
>much.  Befitting its appearance in the Hartford Advocate, it is an advocacy
>piece.  Masterson took a one or two week trip around the Ukraine, primarily
>visiting regional and small town hospitals, accompanied by translators and
>guides. He has some interesting observations about what can only be 
>described as
>a health care crisis in the Ukraine.  He prompts the doctors and other care
>providers he visits to attribute a wide variety of medical problems to the
>"radiation" and mostly reports that they respond by "rolling the eyes and
>shrugging their shoulders".  There is little in the piece that is 
>quantitative.
>Masterson shows no particular familiarity with either science or medicine.  
>He
>recoils in horror at one point with the revelation of a shed containing 
>outdated
>and past-date medical equipment and medicines, including "old-fashioned
>blood-pressure devices filled with poisonous mercury".  I don't know about 
>you,
>but I have a mercury sphyngo-manometer at home and that's what all of my
>physicians use in their offices.
>
>There are a number of factual errors in Masterson's piece, some of them 
>actually
>understating the physical consequences of the accident.
>
>The datum about "approximately 40,000 cleanup workers ... mostly men in 
>their
>30s and 40s" that are supposed to have died is sourced to the Ukrainian
>government.  If you have been paying attention over the years, Ukrainian
>government spokespersons have given an incredible variety of assessments of 
>the
>health consequences of Chernobyl.
>
>Some more careful assessments of Chernobyl health effects can be found on 
>the
>web.  These include 1) February 1999 presentation slides of Oleg Belyakov 
>of the
>Institute of Physics and Biophysics of Salzburg and St. Bartholemew's and 
>the
>Royal London School of Medicine and Dentistry, available at
><www.graylab.ac.uk/usr/belyakov/present/> and 2) the November 1995 report
>Chernobyl Ten Years On, An Assessment by the NEA Committee on Radiation
>Protection and Public Health, available at
><www.nea.fr/html/rp/chernobyl/allchernobyl.html>.
>
>The general picture that emerges is of a larger than expected spike in 
>childhood
>thyroid cancer in the most highly contaminated regions, a smaller than 
>expected
>increase in leukemia, lower general and cancer mortality rates for the
>liquidators, but some striking increases in specific morbidity and 
>mortality
>rates that might reasonably be associated with psychological stress.  
>Issues of
>confounding are significant, since the fall of the Soviet Union was 
>accompanied
>by a breakdown of the medical care system in the former republics and an
>extraordinary upsetting of the entire social infrastructure, itself an 
>obvious
>source of psychological stress.
>
>Best regards.
>
>Jim Dukelow
>Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
>Richland, WA
>jim.dukelow@pnl.gov
>
>These comments are mine and have not been reviewed and/or approved by my
>management or by the U.S. Department of Energy.
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