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Nuclear radiation more dangerous than thought: scientist
BONN, July 12 (AFP) - Nuclear radiation is more dangerous to
health than first thought and the scale measuring its effect should
be reviewed, three German scientist said in an article published
Sunday.
Writing in the Frankfurter Allgemeinen Sonntagszeitung weekly,
Wolfgang Koehnlein, head of the nuclear biology institute at the
university of Muenster, said the current scale dated back to the
atomic bombs of 1945.
Koehnlein, who is also president of Germany's association for
protection against radiation, said that over the years since then
the number of people suffering from radiation damage had been
greater than initially predicted.
Roland Scholz, biochemistry professor at Munich university, said
that at the time of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs it was not
known that even minimal doses of radiation could cause cancer.
The latest knowledge of the medical effects of Hiroshima,
nuclear weapons tests since the 1950s and the Chernobyl disaster
had
not been taken into account, Scholz said.
Edmund Lengfelder, professor of nuclear medicine at Munich,
stressed the high rate of cancers and leukaemia contracted by
children in Belarus following Chernobyl.
Cases of diabetes, respiratory illness and eye problems had also
increased, he said, accusing the experts of International Energy
Agency of misleading public opinion over the level of danger to
health.
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Sandy Perle
Technical Director
ICN Dosimetry Division
Costa Mesa, CA 92626
Office: (800) 548-5100 x2306
Fax: (714) 668-3149
sandyfl@earthlink.net
sperle@icnpharm.com
Personal Website: http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/1205
ICN Dosimetry Website: http://www.dosimetry.com
"The object of opening the mind, as of opening
the mouth, is to close it again on something solid"
- G. K. Chesterton -
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