Re: Chernobyl Death Toll? -Reply

[FRAMEP@ORAU.GOV]

Guday:

A number like 8000 has to be a calculated value. If the deaths are
said to have already taken place, we are almost certainly talking
leukemia. Somebody probably took a world-wide collective dose in
man-rem (or person sieverts) and multiplied by a risk factor for
leukemia.

Theres a nice concise summary of the late health effects in Current
Oncology Vol 1 #3 Sept/Oct 1994. Although the question didn't ask for
the following, its kind of interesting. The 141,309
liquidators/cleanup workers averaged 12.5 rad (cGy) with the
following breakdown:
0-1 rad 7.03%
1-5 rad 15.57%
5-10 rad 28.85% 
10-25 rad 47.28%
25-50 rad 1.27 % 
In Gomel, a district of Belorussia over which the plume passed, the
following numbers for thyroid cancer (incidence not death) were
reported: 1986, 1; 1987, 2; 1988, 1; 1989, 2; 1990, 17; first 6
months of 1991, 18.

I suspect there were a number of unreported deaths (reactor and
cleanup crew) shortly after the accident from the acute effects of
bullets.

Paul Frame