The UN Development Programme and UNICEF have finally admitted in a new
report what many scientists and policy wonks have known for years.
Chernobyl killed thousands -- not from radiation, but from policy based on
radiophobic hysteria. (Editor's note: he two organizations have yet
to make the report available on their websites.)
The exhibitions
of photographs of deformed victims, which raised millions of dollars for
pressure groups and charities, have been exposed as fraudulent. However,
it is unlikely that anti-nuclear activists will acknowledge their culpability in
the deaths they have caused since it would undermine their entire thesis that
low-level radiation is harmful. It is, in fact, entirely
harmless.
In the nearly 15 years since the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe
thousands of people have died and hundreds of thousands of births affected by
its fallout. But the deaths are due to radiophobia, which caused extensive
political fallout, and not from radiation-induced illness. According to UN
scientists looking at the medical effects of Chernobyl, the real disaster has
been psychosomatic disorders that were exacerbated by the mass media hysteria at
the time. This hysteria encouraged inappropriate government actions in the
former Soviet Union such as forced evacuations from locations that might have
been contaminated with radiation.
The nuclear core meltdown that
occurred at Chernobyl in the Soviet Union in April 1986 was a tragedy for the
hundreds of people actually working at the plant. Of these about one third
(134 people) were diagnosed with acute radiation sickness, and 28 of these died
within the first four months of the accident. Since then, 17 more of the
patients who survived the acute phase have died. These later deaths were
caused by lung gangrene, thigh sarcoma, and non-radiation diseases or
accidents. For them and their families, Chernobyl was a disaster.
But for many others it didn't have to be.
Partly because the
international media were denied access to the site -- but also because of acute
radiophobia that has gripped western thought since the World War II atomic
bombing of Japan -- western media assumed the worst. The British Daily
Mail on April 29th 1986 filled half its front page with the words "2000
DEAD." They further claimed that the dead were not buried in cemeteries
but at "Pirogovo in the radioactive wastes depository."
The next
day, The New York Post claimed that 15,000 bodies had been bulldozed into
nuclear waste pits. Later, the Natural Resources Defense Council claimed
there would be 110,000 post-Chernobyl cancers in Central Europe and
Scandinavia. Several years later, on October 13, 1995, Reuters announced
"800,000 children were hit by Chernobyl, as in a nuclear attack." Over the
following months, the BBC, Greenpeace and the numerous European dailies joined
the bandwagon to claim that tens of thousands were dead or dying because of
radiation.
According to Professor Zbigniew Jaworowski, a medical
adviser to the UN on the effects of radiation "perhaps the most important factor
in creating the Chernobyl mythology was the assumption that any radiation dose,
even one close to zero, has some detrimental effect." Jaworowski has been
arguing this point for nearly a decade, and finally the UN is beginning to
listen. This assumption, on which the world's regulations are based, is
called the "linear no-threshold (LNT) hypothesis." This means that there
is no threshold below, which the effects of radiation, which are observed at
high doses, cease to appear.
This hypothesis contradicts all
experimental and epidemiological evidence. That evidence demonstrates no
harm -- and even some benefit -- at low radiation doses. Our bodies can
obviously deal with a low level of exposure to radiation, and it may even
stimulate our systems' defences and make us healthier. The LNT hypothesis
is similar to assuming that one should fear a temperature of 75 Fahrenheit
because at 750 Fahrenheit one would receive fatal burns. There are
numerous places on the planet (Norway, Iran and even Cornwall in Britain) where
natural radiation is far higher than occurred within a few miles from Chernobyl
after the meltdown, with no known human harm.
Following the
accident there was a small increase in radiation levels in Russia, the Ukraine
and Belarus. Massive radiation screening programmes were established in
these regions and in other countries such as Poland. Incidents of thyroid
cancers (the form of cancer most likely following acute exposure to radiation)
had not increased until 1996. Indeed the Brestoblast region of Belarus,
the area with the second lowest radiation level, had the highest incidents of
thyroid cancer. There has been an excess of 1,800 cases of childhood
thyroid cancer in the whole of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, according to the
recent report, but even this may be partly due to previous
under-reporting.
According to a Swedish radiobiologist, Professor
Gunnar Walinder, the LNT hypothesis, and not radiation, is the real health
hazard. The belief that any exposure may be harmful leads to
disproportionate policies to remove people from this hypothetical
danger.
Jaworowski estimates that nearly 5 million people in the former
Soviet Union have been affected by severe psychological stress, leading to
psychosomatic diseases. The main stress was inflicted on those living in
areas where the media and Government informed them that it was fatal to
live. Forced evacuations of the 850,000 newly categorized "Chernobyl
victims" was planned. In the end, 400,000 people were forced to
move.
Many of these people suffered from gastro-intestinal,
endocrinological and other non-radiation induced problems. Relocation
occurred for over 5 years, causing the destruction of family and community
social networks, and according to Jaworowski "exposed the relocated persons to
resentment and ostracism in the new localities, where old inhabitants treated
them as privileged intruders." Relocation started with those exposed to
most radiation (levels about the sixth the background level in Iran), but soon
people exposed to doses of radiation lower than in Cornwall were being moved.
Among those moved, morbidity and mortality rates were far higher than
those who stayed behind. And the cost of the process ran into billions of
dollars. One estimate endorsed by Jaworowski puts the cost to Belarus at
$86 billion. Perhaps saddest of all is that as many as 200,000 abortions
were conducted of wanted pregnancies in order to avoid non-existent radiation
damage to the fetus.
The end result of government action, activist
pressure and media campaigns has been the spawning of a victim culture, where
half of the Ukraine says their health has been adversely affected by
Chernobyl.
Apportioning blame between the media and the Supreme
Soviet is a difficult task. But unfounded western fears based on the
linear no-threshold hypothesis undoubtedly encouraged the mass evacuation
program undertaken by the Soviet authorities.
Chernobyl was the
worst possible meltdown of a poorly designed, constructed and managed nuclear
reactor, with the release of significant quantities of radionuclides into the
atmosphere. Yet, according to the UN Committee on the Effects of Atomic
Radiation, the death toll from the accident itself and directly related effects
is 41.
There were no early death cases among the public. Apart from
increase in thyroid cancer registry (probably due to increased screening rather
than a real increase in incidence) there is no evidence of a major public health
impact related to the ionizing radiation 15 years after the accident. No
increase of overall cancer incidence or mortality that could be associated with
radiation exposure has been observed. Many more deaths were induced by
poor policies based on outdated scientific understanding. And yet today
the LNT hypothesis still forms the basis of radiation thinking.
This is a bizarre indictment of the anti-nuclear world we inhabit.
Let us hope that the recent UN report will begin to change this
perception. But don't hold your breath.
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