Re: Chernobyl Health Study Findings (fwd)

[Schoenhofer <schoenho@via.at>]

At 15:49 1996-04-15 -0500, you wrote:
>          Recently had to sit through a CBS News report on Chernobyl that 
>          professed that 30,000 people had died as a result of this .....
> =======================================================================

Last week there was an IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) conference
in Vienna "One Decade after Chernobyl - summing up the effects". In spite of
the fact that there was a big number of speeches from dignitaries of all
possible countries (like Ukraine, Belarus, Russia....) and organisations
(WHO, IAEA, UNSCEAR---) there was also a number of scientific papers on high
level, summaring the effects. Childhood thyroid cancer did really rise
dramatically - much more than one should expect and much too early. Leukämia
cases did not rise in number - contrary, what one should expect. The number
of people died of acute radiation sickness is around 35. Bone marrow
transplantation proved to be totally useless. The financial and
psychological situation is a nightmare. The population has no trust at all
into their authorities, foreign scientists are trust much more. People in
non contaminated areas believe that they suffer from radiation to an extend
similar to people in highly contaminated areas. External organisations try
to establish believe and self consciousness among affected people,
especially children.

There is little known about the fate of the liquidators, but the death toll
reported often, seems to be consistent with the percentage of deaths in a
normal, non exposed, similarily distributed population. 

States, organisations, hospitals etc. need money and they try to make money
- the most promising way is to claim effects from the Chernobyl disaster.
(It really was one!) If you have a document showing that you were a
liquidator, you have benefits - some people believe that therefore the
number of people claiming to have been a liquidator is so high..... 

So much in short, the numbers given in the reply of Bruce Busby seem to be
rather consistent with what I heard last week. 

You cannot avoid that the mass media will take any chance to make money on
what so ever - not only Nuclear Power. We radiation protection people pick
out from broadcasts and papers, what at our first sight attracts our eyes -
articles on Nuclear Power and Radiation. For other people this is just
another issue like inflation, good or bad harvest, environmental pollution
etc. The interest of people in Chernobyl has at least in my country
(Austria) gone down dramatically. I went all this through in 1986 - this
nightmare of thousands of useless samples to be measured, the information
crisis, the behaviour of former good frieds, who forgot all friendship, just
to get on TV themselves for a minute and especially the concerns of the
population expressed by a telephone ringing about 20 hours a day constantly,
people seeking advice and not believing me when I told them to live their
life as before. But this year (10th anniversary)? News media have started
with their horror stories already. I expected a lot of people ringing (we do
the radioactivity measurements in food), whather mushrooms could be eaten,
whether this and that was "safe" for consumption etc. Believe me - not a
single call yet. Let´s hope that this holds on. And let´s hope that
something totally crazy and unnecessary like the Chernobyl accident will
never happen again. 

Franz Schoenhofer
Federal Institute for Food Control and Research
Kinderspitalg. 15
A-1095 Vienna
AUSTRIA

Phone: -43-1-40 491-520
Fax:   -43-1-40 491-540

private: phone/fax: -43-1-495 53 08
         e-mail: schoenho@via.at 
Christian Schönhofer
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e-mail:		schoenho@via.at