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Major UN report counts human cost of Chernobyl
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The huge cloud of radiation that spewed from the broken reactor at Chernobyl in 1986 will kill 4000 people, says the most authoritative report yet on the nuclear disaster. The radiation also caused 4000 thyroid cancers amongst young people and contaminated more than 200,000 square kilometres of Europe. And the stress of events triggered widespread mental health problems amongst the populations of the worst-hit countries. These are the conclusions of the biggest study to date of the impact of the explosions that ripped apart Chernobyl reactor number 4 on 26 April 1986. It was compiled by the Chernobyl Forum, comprising more than 100 scientists, eight UN agencies and the governments of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. The total amount of radioactivity released by the accident over 10 days was huge, reaching 14 exabecquerels (14 x 1018 becquerels). Previous estimates of the death toll this would cause have varied – from under 50 clean-up workers to hundreds of thousands of people across Europe. But the UN study predicts the real number that will die from long-term cancers caused by the radiation to be about 3940. The deaths will be among the 586,000 most contaminated by the accident - the 200,000 clean-up workers, the 116,000 evacuated from around the plant and the 270,000 residents of the most radioactive areas. Paralysing fatalism In addition, some 50 emergency workers have already died from acute radiation poisoning or linked causes. Nine of the 4000 children who contracted thyroid cancer have also died. Because of the difficulty of attributing specific cancers to radiation over decades, the precise number of deaths is "unlikely ever to be known", the study says. Alongside radiation, the study suggests that mental illness has been the biggest public health problem caused by the accident. Families forcibly relocated were left deeply traumatised and residents of contaminated areas have succumbed to a "paralysing fatalism", it says. According to Michael Repacholi, radiation manager for the UN's World Health Organization, a "high proportion" of people most contaminated have suffered from stress. Sometimes this had led to reckless behaviour, including eating highly contaminated food, overindulgence in alcohol and tobacco and "unprotected promiscuous sexual activity". Permanent blight Repacholi nevertheless insisted that the study's overall health message was "reassuring". He notes that 25% of those affected by Chernobyl would ultimately die from spontaneous cancers anyway, and only 3% would die from cancer as a result of exposure. "Most people will be surprised that there are so few deaths," he told New Scientist. His remarks, however, were criticised as "quite inappropriate" by a former WHO radiation scientist, Keith Baverstock. The lives of people living in contaminated areas had been "permanently blighted", he says. "I doubt they find that reassuring." Baverstock was also concerned that the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency, whose remit is to promote nuclear power, may have had too great an influence in the study. The study's assessment of radiation risks should be regarded with scepticism, he argues. But this was disputed by Murdoch Baxter, a former IAEA radiation scientist. "Chernobyl unfortunately set back the development of nuclear power by decades," he says. "This authoritative study will help put its real impact on people and the environment into perspective." |
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