Prof. Eli Stern reminds of Repacholi's /WHO/UN deny of Chernobyl disaster
news....@googlemail.com
Filed under: Ionizing Radiation: Depleted Uranium, Chernobyl, etc.
From Iris Atzmon:
UN accused of ignoring 500,000 Chernobyl deaths
· Atomic agency says toll will not exceed 4,000
· Doctors ‘overwhelmed’ by cancers and mutations
John Vidal, environment editor
Saturday March 25, 2006
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/ukraine/story/0,,1739339,00.html
Also see:
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/magazine/story/0,,1738134,00.html
United Nations nuclear and health watchdogs have ignored evidence of deaths, cancers, mutations and other conditions after the Chernobyl accident, leading scientists and doctors have claimed in the run-up to the nuclear disaster’s 20th anniversary next month.
In a series of reports about to be published, they will suggest that at least 30,000 people are expected to die of cancers linked directly to severe radiation exposure in 1986 and up to 500,000 people may have already died as a result of the world’s worst environmental catastrophe.
But the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the WHO say that only 50 deaths can be directly attributed to the disaster, and that, at most, 4,000 people may eventually die from the accident on April 26 1986.
They say only nine children have died of thyroid cancers in 20 years and that the majority of illnesses among the estimated 5 million people contaminated in the former Soviet Union are attributable to growing poverty and unhealthy lifestyles.
An IAEA spokesman said he was confident the UN figures were correct. “We have a wide scientific consensus of 100 leading scientists. When we see or hear of very high mortalities we can only lean back and question the legitimacy of the figures. Do they have qualified people? Are they responsible? If they have data that they think are excluded then they should send it.”
The new estimates have been collated by researchers commissioned by European parliamentary groups, Greenpeace International and medical foundations in Britain, Germany, Ukraine, Scandinavia and elsewhere. They take into account more than 50 published scientific studies.
“At least 500,000 people — perhaps more — have already died out of the two million people who were officially classed as victims of Chernobyl in Ukraine,” said Nikolai Omelyanets, deputy head of the National Commission for Radiation Protection in Ukraine. “[Studies show] that 34,499 people who took part in the clean-up of Chernobyl have died in the years since the catastrophe. The deaths of these people from cancers was nearly three times as high as in the rest of the population.
“We have found that infant mortality increased 20 percent to 30 percent because of chronic exposure to radiation after the accident. All this information has been ignored by the IAEA and WHO. We sent it to them in March last year and again in June. They’ve not said why they haven’t accepted it,” he said.
Evgenia Stepanova, of the Ukrainian government’s Scientific Center for Radiation Medicine, said: “We’re overwhelmed by thyroid cancers, leukaemias and genetic mutations that are not recorded in the WHO data and which were practically unknown 20 years ago.”
The IAEA and WHO, however, say that apart from an increase in thyroid cancer in children there is no evidence of a large-scale impact on public health. “No increases in overall cancer incidence or mortality that could be associated with radiation exposure have been observed,” said the agencies’ report in September.
In the Rivne region of Ukraine, 500km west of Chernobyl, doctors say that they are coming across an unusual rate of cancers and mutations. “In the 30 hospitals of our region we find that up to 30 percent of people who were in highly radiated areas have physical disorders, including heart and blood diseases, cancers and respiratory diseases. Nearly one in three of all the new born babies have deformities, mostly internal,” said Alexander Vewremchuk, of the Special Hospital for the Radiological Protection of the Population in Vilne.
Filed under: Ionizing Radiation: Depleted Uranium, Chernobyl, etc.
The weblog version of this message is at:
http://www.emfacts.com/weblog/index.php?p=519
From Eileen O’Connor:
Just when we though we had got rid of him, he turns up like a bad penny. We’ve all just had a gut full of watching Repacholi on TV, BBC 2 Horizon programme. The programme was about Chernobyl.
** Chernobyl’s ‘nuclear nightmares’ **
“Claims that thousands will die as a result of the
Chernobyl disaster are unfounded, scientists tell the
Horizon programme.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/1/hi/sci/tech/5173310.stm
He [Repacholi] was saying that they need to re-evaluate the whole radiation spectrum as they now believe that radiation does not harm as much as they previously believed and it might also protect against cancer!!!!!!!
The programme presented a very one sided view.
Take a look at some of Repacholi’s friends who featured on the programme:
Professor Ron Chesser, of Texas Tech University, US,
http://www.biol.ttu.edu/fac_staff.asp?tp=faculty&name=Ron_Chesser
http://www.faculty.biol.ttu.edu/chesser/CenterEnvRadStud.pdf
page 7
DR. ANTONE L. BROOKS
http://www.tricity.wsu.edu/faculty/brooks/Brooks_A.html
http://www.faculty.biol.ttu.edu/chesser/PUBLICATIONS.pdf
http://www.tricity.wsu.edu/tbrooks/
CURRENT MAJOR AREA OF WORK
I currently have a three-year grant to act as a communication
specialist and chief scientist for the DOE Low-Dose Research
program. This is a $20 Million dollar a year 10 year program
which is directed toward providing a scientific base for
radiation protection standards after very low exposures to
ionizing radiation. As outlined above this grant provides me
with $570,280 dollars over a three year period. This grant
will provide most (70-80%) of my salary, travel money and a
part time secretary. My role in this program is to:
* Provide scientific and technical support for the DOE
Low-Dose Research Program.
*Facilitate the interactions between DOE, scientists,
regulatory and scientific committees, and other government and
regulatory agencies.
*Provide a focal point for generation of educational materials and for communication of research results between the scientists, decision-makers and the public.
All the best
Eileen O’Connor
Filed under: Ionizing Radiation: Depleted Uranium, Chernobyl, etc.
The weblog version of this message is at:
http://www.emfacts.com/weblog/index.php?p=523
From Eileen O’Connor:
The enclosed information from Richard Bramhall in response to Mike Repacholi’s appearance on the BBC Horizon programme ‘Nuclear Nightmares’ is interesting.
From Richard Bramhall, The Low Level Radiation Campaign
Horizon: Nuclear Nightmares. BBC Two, 9.00 p.m. Thursday 13th July (United Kingdom)
A lot of people have, understandably, been outraged at the advance spin on this documentary (see, e.g. Monday’s 10th July Times http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2263204.html).
The programme apparently will offer up as “new” (The Times says) the idea that there is a threshold dose below which radiation doesn’t cause harm. We read that it “may even be beneficial” and that “Evidence … has convinced experts that the risks of radiation follow a much more complex pattern than predicted.”
We certainly agree that dose/response curves are complex. The reason for the complexity is that more than 50 years ago the American National Committee on Radiological Protection adopted a grossly simplistic concept of “dose” as an average of energy deposited into body tissue. This model was based on external irradiation, with which they were familiar since it was what they had been dealing with for decades in the search for adequate standards for regulating X-rays. It wasn’t too difficult to extend that simple physics-based model to the external irradiation from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs, and it was convenient to assume that radioactivity inside the body could be understood as if it were external — an approach which fails to account properly for the huge variations in energy distribution from different kinds of radioactivity. Even in 1952 Karl Z. Morgan, who was responsible for the NCRP sub-committee on internal radioactivity, refused to agree that internal could be dealt with like external. His sub-committee was closed down and for the rest of his life he was a critic of the NCRP and its successor the International Commission on Radiological Protection – “I feel like a father who is ashamed of his children.” All this happened before the structure of DNA was discovered and long before biological responses like genomic instability, the bystander effect and microinflammation were even suspected. For these reasons all competent authorities now recognise that for many internal exposures “dose” is a virtually meaningless term, so it is irritating to see propaganda like The Times report still using it; inhaled particles of reactor fuel cannot be compared with chest X-rays. One size does not fit all.
It is appalling to see WHO denying the reality of life post-Chernobyl, but we must bear in mind that their minds are clouded by the ICRP dose/risk model and by the International Atomic Energy Agency’s power of vetoing any WHO research on radiation and health. In their crazed world the risk model predicts no discernible health impact because doses (whatever “dose” may mean) from Chernobyl fallout were too small — a maximum of twice natural background. When there is an all-too-observable impact (e.g. 30% increase in cancer in Belarus in ten post-Chernobyl years or a similar increase in northern Sweden) they say it must be caused by something else rather than inferring that the risk model is wrong. Their science and their epidemiology are like two drunks holding each other up — a temporary marvel!
For an alternative view see http://www.euradcom.org and the European Committee on Radiation Risk’s volume Chernobyl: 20 Years On. ECRR has summarised thousands of Ukrainian, Belarusian and Russian studies. Scientists and clinicians in those regions are reporting a melt-down in human health. Studies of animals and plants show genetic defects transmitted over 22 generations, although plants don’t suffer from radiophobia. There is a flyer on http://www.euradcom.org/publications/chernobyleflyer.pdf.
In 2004 LLRC summarised about 100 of these Russian language studies for the CERRIE Minority Report: they are on our site at http://www.llrc.org/health/subtopic/russianrefs.htm.
The BBC documentary “Nuclear Nightmares” looks as if it will be propaganda intended to soften us up for a new round of nuclear power stations. We have raised this with the series producer and we shall be watching to see if the programme or the series complies with the rules of the Office of Communications. Rule 5.5. says “Due impartiality on matters of political or industrial controversy and matters relating to current public policy must be preserved […] This may be achieved within a programme or over a series of programmes taken as a whole.”
We have obtained calculations of the health impact of replacing the present nuclear power generating capacity with new nuclear build. These are based on the ECRR’s 2003 Recommendations and will be the subject of a separate circular.
We don’t feel worried by the UK Government’s announcement today. Nuclear power stations cannot operate without discharge licences, but the scientific debate over radiation risk has reached such a point that any decision to emit radioactivity will be subject to legal challenge. That’s the point at which the drunks will hit the pavement.
The Low Level Radiation Campaign
Filed under: Ionizing Radiation: Depleted Uranium, Chernobyl, etc.
The weblog version of this message is at:
http://www.emfacts.com/weblog/index.php?p=522
This commentary is in response to the below BBC article about the BBC Horizon documentary that downplays the Chernobyl nuclear disaster (Message #519). Michael Repacholi, retiring from being the head of the WHO’s International EMF Project now is the expert spokesperson for the “Chernobyl Forum”, organized by the nuclear power regulator and promoter, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Besides the IAEA, other UN organizations involved in the Forum include the Food and Agriculture Organization, UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, UN Development Programme, UN Environment Programme, UN Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, the World Health Organization and the World Bank. Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine are also represented.
It is understandable that Repacholi should now speak for the UN agencies as he has an impressive track record in successfully manipulating international organizations into supporting vested industrial interests. See: http://www.emfacts.com/papers/who_conflict.pdf
Repacholi comes to the aid of the international nuclear industry somewhat like The Exorcist, hired to rid the industry of the ghosts of Chernobyl. Correct or not, fears of further Chernobyl scale accidents obviously stands in the way of the widespread public acceptance of nuclear power. This is a major public relations problem for an industry now actively trying to promote their technology as the obvious clean solution for the world’s looming energy and Greenhouse gas crisis. Just as Repacholi worked his magic to convince governments and national radiation health agencies that EMFs are harmless, other than at extremely high levels, he now has to work his magic with hard radiation.
However before the nuclear industry can achieve an environmentally clean image necessary for widespread acceptance there a few Specters that Repacholi and his band of merry men will have to slay first.
Getting rid of LNTM
It has been a long accepted scientific understanding that there is no safe level of ionizing radiation, below which no biological hazards (cancer) occur. Known as the “Linear No Threshold Model” (LNTM), it assumes that the biological response to ionizing radiation is linear to vanishingly small doses so that there is no threshold of exposure below which the response ceases to be linear. So, if a particular dose of radiation is found to produce one extra case of a type of cancer in every thousand people exposed, the LNTM predicts that one thousandth of this dose will produce one extra case in every million people so exposed, and that one millionth of this dose will produce one extra case in every billion people exposed. With LNTM any nuclear leak from a nuclear power plant is a potential health hazard. With LNTM, the radiation spread over Europe and Russia from Chernobyl was a major public health hazard issue. So too is has been the widespread use of depleted uranium by US, British and NATO forces.
The theory created to slay LNTM is the theory of “Radiation
Hormesis” that argues that low doses of ionizing
radiation are not that bad and are actually beneficial.
This theory proposes that upon exposure to low level
ionizing radiation, genes that repair damage due to
radiation are activated and reduce damage from other
causes, which would otherwise be imperfectly repaired.
Proponents of Radiation Hormesis, such as the nuclear
industry and scientists who receive funding from this
sector, use limited and selected evidence to claim for
instance that there is evidence that radiation levels of
100 mSev/year may actually be positive or at least neutral
to health. So no need to worry about a few nuclear leaks
even if to the extent of a Chernobyl.
(Also see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis
)
LLRW and a bizarre possibility
A major problem for the nuclear power industry has long been the storage of both high level radioactive waste and low level radioactive waste (lets call it LLRW). If the Radiation Hormesis theory is successful in replacing the LNTM theory, high level radioactive waste storage would remain unchanged but will be the status of LLRW storage change? If exposure to low level radiation is considered beneficial perhaps LLRW could be re-classified from a hazardous waste to something less dangerous, maybe even a consumable item? This may seem absolutely bizarre but consider that this was exactly what was done in the US with the left over highly toxic wastes from sewage treatment plants. This is the effluent sludge left over at the bottom of the tanks after the sewage treatment process was completed, - literally concentrated poo. This stuff contains a veritable inventory of industrial chemicals, bacteria, viruses, fungi, heavy metals, and radioactive wastes, etc. It cannot be dumped at sea because it tends to kill everything on the ocean floor, or used in landfill because it tends to poison ground water. But then what to do with the 10 million tons being generated per year in the US? Where to put it? The ingenious solution was simply to re-classify sewage sludge from a hazardous waste to a beneficial farm fertilizer called “Biosolids”, a “nutrient rich organic byproduct of the nation’s wasterwater process.” In 1992 the EPA modified its “Part 503″ technical standards which regulate sludge application on farmlands. The new regulations used the term “biosolids” for the first time, and sewage sludge which was previously designated as hazardous waste was reclassified as “Class A” fertilizer. This change was accompanied with an extensive public advertising campaign extolling the many benefits of this wondrous product.
(Reference “Toxic Sludge is Good For You: Stauber & Rampton, pages 105-122, 1995.)
Is a comparison to Biosolids and Low Level radioactive wastes really that outrageous considering that the nuclear industry already sanctions the spreading of depleted uranium over heavily populated areas of the the Balkans, Iraq and Afghanistan?
As for the Balkans war Repacholi said at the time that “You would die of suffocation before you could inhale enough of the dust to cause cancer, and even then there’s a low probability of cancer,” (Reference: http://www.stopnato.org.uk/du-watch/tosic/cover-up.htm)
Among other things, if Radiation Hormesis replaces the Linear No Threshold Model, expect some innovative changes to the way low level radioactive wastes are disposed of. Why not consider the following innovations:
* Adding Low level radioactive waste to the water supply,
similarly to what is done with floride, as a cancer
preventative.
*An additive in livestock feed to give healthier cows.
*Combine radioactive wastes with “Biosolids” as an
improved fertilizer to be spread on farmland, perhaps with
a nifty name change to “BioRad Plus”.
* I particularly like the proposal once made by the West
Australian Mining magnate, Lang Hancock,who proposed
making garbage bins out of radioactive wastes because the
radiation would keep the flies down!
* Since increased mutation rates are now seen in Chernobyl
wildlife, a fact Radiation Hormesis proponents tend to
avoid, why not promote the widespread aerial dumping of
LLRW over wilderness areas as a method of improving
genetic diversity. (See: GENETIC DIVERSITY OF
CLETHRIONOMYS GLAREOLUS POPULATIONS FROM HIGHLY
CONTAMINATED SITES IN THE CHORNOBYL REGION, UKRAINE,
Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, Volume: 19 Issue:
8 Pages: 2130-2135)
The Horizon production refers to “Chernobyl’s nuclear nightmares” but that is nothing compared to the nuclear nightmare if the delusion of Radiation Hormesis and the lies of Repacholi takes hold.
Don
Chernobyl’s ‘nuclear nightmares’
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/5173310.stm
By Nick Davidson
Producer, Horizon
On 26 April 1986, reactor number four at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant blew up. Forty-eight hours later the entire area was evacuated. Over the following months there were stories of mass graves and dire warnings of thousands of deaths from radiation exposure.
Yet in a BBC Horizon report to be screened on Thursday, a number of scientists argue that 20 years after the accident there is no credible scientific evidence that any of these predications are coming true.
The anniversary of the world’s worst nuclear accident in April saw the publication of a number of reports that examined the potential death toll resulting from exposure to radiation from Chernobyl.
Environmental group Greenpeace said the figure would be near 100,000. Another, Torch (The Other Report on Chernobyl), predicted an extra 30,000-60,000 cancer deaths across Europe.
But according to figures from the Chernobyl Forum, an international organisation of scientific bodies including a number of UN agencies, deaths directly attributable to radiation from Chernobyl currently stand at 56 - less than the weekly death toll on Britain’s roads.
“When people hear of radiation they think of the atomic bomb and they think of thousands of deaths, and they think the Chernobyl reactor accident was equivalent to the atomic bombing in Japan which is absolutely untrue,” says Dr Mike Repacholi, a radiation scientist working at the World Health Organization (WHO).
Outdated models
Scientists involved in the Forum expect the death toll to rise but not far.
“We’re not going to get an epidemic of leukaemia,” Dr Repacholi tells Horizon, “and we don’t expect an epidemic of solid cancers either.”
So why have the predictions varied so wildly?
Scientific as well as public attitudes to radiation are still dominated by the devastating effects of the atomic bombs dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the US more than half-a-century ago.
At least 200,000 people died almost immediately from the blast, and thousands more were exposed to higher levels of radiation than anybody had ever been exposed to before.
The survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki became the most intensely studied people in the world.
“The detonation of the A-bomb,” explains Professor Antone L Brooks of Washington State University, US, “was the first time that scientists had an opportunity really to look and to see the health effects of radiation; how much radiation was required to produce how much cancer.”
In 1958, using data largely drawn from these bomb studies, scientists came up with an answer. It was called the Linear No Threshold (LNT) model and suggested all radiation, no matter how small, was dangerous.
It became the internationally recognised basis for assessing radiation risk.
Yet there has always been a problem with it. The data from Hiroshima and Nagasaki were for very high levels of radiation exposure, often in the range of thousands of millisieverts. There were no significant data for lower exposures, particularly below 200 millisieverts.
“The model was based on high doses and we just didn’t know what was going on at lower doses of between one and 200 millisieverts,” says Dr Repacholi.
Scientists simply guessed that if high-level radiation was dangerous then lower levels would also be hazardous. They made “an assumption”, observes Dr Repacholi.
Chernobyl, where most people received radiation doses below 200 millisieverts, has been the first large-scale opportunity to test whether this assumption is true. The evidence from the Chernobyl Forum suggests it is not.
“Low doses of radiation are a [very] poor carcinogen,” says Professor Brooks, who has spent 30 years studying the link between radiation and cancer.
“If you talk to anybody and you say the word radiation, immediately you get a fear response. That fear response has caused people to do things that are scientifically unfounded.”
Beneficial effects
Other studies have come to even more startling conclusions.
Professor Ron Chesser, of Texas Tech University, US, has spent 10 years studying animals living within the 30km exclusion zone surrounding Chernobyl.
He has found that, far from the effects of low-level radiation being carcinogenic, it appears to boost those genes that protect us against cancer.
“One of the thoughts that comes out of this is that prior exposure to low levels of radiation actually may have a beneficial effect,” Professor Chesser says.
Today, although most radiation scientists are reluctant to sign up to radiation hormesis, as this phenomenon is known, there is a growing body of opinion that it is time to rethink the LNT model and with it our attitude to radiation exposure below about 200 millisieverts.
However, a number of radiological protection scientists still advocate the use of the LNT model.
In April, the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) published a report that used the latest LNT-based radiation risk projection models to update the estimated cancer deaths from Chernobyl.
It concluded that about 16,000 people across Europe could die as a result of the accident.
Dr Peter Boyle, director of the IARC, put the row over the figures into perspective: “Tobacco smoking will cause several thousand times more cancers in the same population.”
Chernobyl was about as bad as a power station accident gets - a complete melt down of the reactor core - yet the lessons of the accident suggest that among the myriad of issues surrounding nuclear power, the threat to human health posed by radiation has been overstated.
Viewers in the UK can watch the Horizon report Nuclear Nightmares at 2100 BST, BBC Two, on Thursday, 13 July 2006
Filed under: Ionizing Radiation: Depleted Uranium, Chernobyl, etc.
From Milt Bowling:
Dr. Rosalie Bertell was awarded the Right Livelihood Award in 1986 for her work on radiation. She points out how unqualified Repacholi is to comment on Chernobyl, which will be no surprise to this list.
cheers,
Milt
http://www.iicph.org/docs/bertell_response_pressrelease_chernobyl_2005..htm
Rosalie Bertell responds to the 2005
WHO/IAEA/UNDP Press Release on Chernobyl
by Rosalie Bertell, Ph.D., GNSH
Comments on the Press Release:
«Chernobyl: the true scale of the accident»
Joint News Release WHO/IAEA/UNDP
This press release of 5 September 2005, which purports to be a consensus of more than a hundred scientists represents some very poor scientific conclusions. For example, under: “Major study findings”, one finds the following quote:
«Approximately 1000 on-site reactor staff and emergency workers were heavily exposed to high-level radiation on the first day of the accident; among the more than 200,000 emergency and recovery operation workers exposed during the period from 1986-1987, an estimated 2200 radiation-caused deaths can be expected during their lifetime».
Radiation-caused deaths is a loaded statement. It assumes that only death is considered to be a detriment, and eliminates consideration of all severe and debilitating morbidity. Moreover, these scientists, trained by the documents released by ICRP (International Commission on Radiological Protection) over the last fifty years, have accepted without question that the only health effects “of concern” attributable to radiation are deaths from cancer. Non-fatal cancers are basically of no concern. These are administrative decisions and not science. Radiation causes random damage to cellular DNA, yet only damage manifested as cancer death is considered to be a detriment. There is no mention of the mitochondrial DNA (mDNA), which is sixteen times more vulnerable to radiation than is the cellular DNA, and the damage of which is expressed as different but equally devastating illnesses as cancer.
«An estimated five million people currently live in areas of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine that are contaminated with radionuclides due to the accident; about 100 000 of them live in areas classified in the past by government authorities as areas of “strict control”. The existing “zoning” definitions need to be revisited and relaxed in light of the new findings».
This second “major” and “important finding” proposes relaxing the existing zoning regulations in the light the clearly unscientific findings. There appears to be a conscious vested interest behind this press release and report. Such an economic goal is unbecoming of the purportedly scientific assessment of human health damage. I would expect that a political response to a serious scientific study would be made by government officials who would assume political responsibility for reliance on the science. Scientists do not normally make political decisions, nor should government officials blindly rely on decisions claiming to be scientific.
«About 4000 cases of thyroid cancer, mainly in children and adolescents at the time of the accident, have resulted from the accident's contamination and at least nine children died of thyroid cancer; however the survival rate among such cancer victims, judging from experience in Belarus, has been almost 99%».
AAgain we find the strong and unreasonable reliance on the ICRP decision to ignore all health effects of radiation which are not fatal cancers. Clearly those who have had surgery or are on thyroid hormone for the rest of their life would have serious arguments with this callousness.
«Most emergency workers and people living in contaminated areas received relatively low whole body radiation doses, comparable to natural background levels. As a consequence, no evidence or likelihood of decreased fertility among the affected population has been found, nor has there been any evidence of increases in congenital malformations that can be attributed to radiation exposure».
Nuclear debris from an operating reactor is not natural background radiation. Its physical and biochemical properties are different, as is the proportion of internal vs. external exposure it causes. A uranium fire, such as occurred at Chernobyl, burns at 3000 to 6000 degrees Centigrade, heat sufficient to aerosolize all metals exposed to it - including all radioactive heavy metals, iron, steel, nickel, copper, etc. In an internal aerosolized ceramic form, the maximum possible dose from the radioactive chemicals is delivered to the victim, and the maximum toxic metal effect can be caused. This is because in a pulverized ceramic form, of nanometer size, the surface area is maximized, the self-shielding is minimized, and the solubility in body fluid is minimized, resulting in a maximum contact dose. Nano particles can pass through the cell wall, the blood-lung and blood-brain barriers, and can penetrate to the seminal fluid or cross the placenta. They are too small to be removed by the kidney filters. This ar tificial debris is not life compatible. Moreover, although natural radiation is more life compatible, it also takes a toll on the cellular communication system of the body causing what we consider to be the natural aging process and natural cancers of old age.
The medical profession recognizes many more radiation-related genetic and teratogentic effects of radiation than does the ICRP, and the nuclear establishment. For this reason, there is no permissible X-irradiation of pregnant women. ICRP limits its concern to serious genetic disease in live borne offspring and severe “mental retardation” (their terminology) due to exposure during a small window during the pregnancy. Most normal people are concerned for spontaneous abortions, still births, and all manner of congenital malformations and diseases.
«Poverty, “lifestyle” diseases now rampant in the former Soviet Union and mental health problems pose a far greater threat to local communities than does radiation exposure».
Poverty is frequently the result of debilitating chronic diseases. How many people lose their jobs because of non-fatal cancer, chronic fatigue, and other illnesses?
Lifestyle is a judgment, not a scientific finding, that it would be possible for a person to avoid an environmental hazard. For example, smoking is listed as a life style choice to avoid the carcinogens in tobacco, avoiding fatty foods is a life style choice to avoid those carcinogens which are fat soluble, or using a sun screen is a lifestyle choice to protect oneself from the harmful rays of the sun. Again designating diseases as lifestyle rather than radiation-related is a judgment, made to avoid the questions of polluted environment, cf. tobacco leaves, animal fat or the sun, or for nuclear debris, mushrooms, root vegetables, and milk.
Mental illness may itself be radiation-related, especially when the radioactive particles are small enough to penetrate the blood brain barrier. There have been studies of suicides and violent behavior after exposure to radiation which makes this hypothesis worthy of further investigation.
«Relocation proved a 'deeply traumatic experience' for some 350,000 people moved out of the affected areas. Although 116 000 were moved from the most heavily impacted area immediately after the accident, later relocations did little to reduce radiation exposure».
This is a very interesting observation. It could be interpreted that most of the contamination was caused immediately after the explosion, or that because of distribution of food practices the whole population was exposed. I would note that evacuation might not have been timely because of the secrecy surrounding the disaster. How one decides that trauma is due to evacuation (which may well be a relief) rather than radiation is not clear.
«Persistent myths and misperceptions about the threat of radiation have resulted in 'paralyzing fatalism' among residents of affected areas».
The truth may well lie between the fatalistic predictions and the over-optimistic ideas of the physicists, who have little sympathy with chronic illness! Many people knew nothing about radiation except the public relations promotional advertising surrounding the nuclear plants prior to the accident. In fact so many were uninformed that they stood and watched the Chernobyl fire without protecting themselves. These people feel rightly that they were deceived. Press releases such as this work against a sensible admission and response to the experienced problems of the people.
«Ambitious rehabilitation and social benefit programs started by the former Soviet Union, and continued by Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, need reformulation due to changes in radiation conditions, poor targeting and funding shortages».
This is too vague to be of informational value. The emphasis on “funding shortages” again introduces an economic priority that does not belong in a scientific article pretending to be on the public health results of the disaster.
«Structural elements of the sarcophagus built to contain the damaged reactor have degraded, posing a risk of collapse and the release of radioactive dust».
While this appears to be a preventive health recommendation, it seems obvious that the sarcophagus has never been completely sealed because of the on-going fissioning of the fuel. The damaged Chernobyl reactor has been leaking radioactive gases, liquids and particulates for the last 20 years.
«A comprehensive plan to dispose of tons of high-level radioactive waste at and around the Chernobyl NPP site, in accordance with current safety standards, has yet to be defined».
This Chernobyl reactor sits near to the bank of the Dneiper River, which provides the drinking water supply of the city of Kiev, and irrigates farm and orchard land in what was, before the disaster, the bread basket of the former Soviet Union. These tons of high-level radioactive waste have been leaking into the biosphere for some 20 years. It is about time a waste management plan (not a disposal) was designed. Imaging that a “disposal” plan could ever be designed is to be ignorant of the natural recycling of materials in our planet! The earth has an efficient way to clean the soil and air, washing all chemical compounds out to the ocean sink for recycling into the food web of future generations.
The spokesperson for this report is Dr. Michael Repacholi, introduced as “Manager of WHO's Radiation Program”. According to Dr. Repacholi's speech on the WHO's International EMF Project, he deals with heath and environmental effects of “exposure to static and time-varying electric and magnetic fields in the frequency range 0 - 300 GHz”. This includes radio frequencies between extra-low radio frequency and high frequency microwaves. It excludes soft X-Ray, hard X-ray and gamma rays, which are the ionizing radiation portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. This range also excludes nuclear particulates released in a nuclear disaster.
Dr. Rapacholi has a Bachelor of Science in Physics from the University of Western Australia, a Master of Science in Radiation biology from London University, and a Ph.D. in biology from Ottawa University in Canada. He is a Fellow and past Chair of the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection. He is perhaps not the best spokesperson for a nuclear disaster, ionizing radiation exposure assessment.
One of recommendations made in the report is the following:
«In the environmental realm, the Report calls for long term monitoring of caesium and strontium radionuclides to assess human exposure and food contamination and to analyze the impacts of remedial actions and radiation-reduction countermeasures. Better information needs to be provided to the public about the persistence of radioactive contamination in certain food products and about food preparation methods that reduce radionuclide intake. Restrictions on harvesting of some wild food products are still needed in some areas».
Failure to avoid wild products, utilize proper preparation methods and follow cooking suggestions could, of course, be designated “lifestyle choices” and therefore any illness would be the fault of the victim, not the disaster!
This unscientific press release purports to give the most important findings of the full report, yet it gives little comfort to the suffering people exposed to this disaster. More blame of the victims and higher levels of exposure to chronic doses of radiation are proposed, and there are no adequate responses to address the real health problems of the survivors!
Dr. Rosalie Bertell
10 September 2005