The health effects of the Chernobyl accident – Focus

The problem is that ardent antagonists – documenting posed by side, often contradictory arguments – often evoke the same phenomena and facts, describing them completely different numbers, some of which must be false. However, for the average observer, such a discussion as to which of them are true, it is extremely difficult.

In assessing the number of victims of Chernobyl has no major discussion on the number of early deaths that occurred after the accident. Two people died in the same crash, one killed by the explosion, the second as a result of a heart attack. A third person died the next morning as a result of thermal burns (scalding steam). Among the Chernobyl NPP workers and firefighters who received in a short time, high doses of radiation to the whole body 28 died in the first four months after the accident as a result of acute radiation sickness. Hence, the number of early deaths caused by Chernobyl is 31.

Among the other 106 people who received high doses from 1300 to 5300 mSv, they recorded 19 deaths (in general, no relation to the radiation) in the period since 1987 2006. [1]. Although only three cases of deaths could be related to radiation, but the reports included in all of them to a group of Chernobyl victims. [2]

The average doses received by residents nearest European countries after the Chernobyl accident were small, not exceed 0.3% of the dose normally received during the life from natural sources and do not cause any health effects. In Poland, the average radiation dose in the first year after the accident was 0.27 mSv.

For comparison, it is worth knowing that the average annual dose of radiation caused by cosmic rays, soil radiation, radiation elements (such as potassium K-40) contained in our bodies and natural sources in Poland is 2.5 mSv, as well as the standard dose of the world. But in many parts of the world, and doses are several dozen times higher and it does not cause any ill effects. For example, in Finland doses are 7 mSv / year and the Finns live longer than five years for Poles and are healthier. Likewise, high doses are in Sweden or in the region of the Massif Central in France.

The basic dispute concerns the health effects among people who were in the course of failure within several to several tens of kilometers from the power plant, received small doses and were evacuated or continue to live in the areas around Chernobyl. Antinuclear organizations claim that the number of deaths in this population is huge, from 10 thousand. by 100 thousand. up to several million. This information is by these organizations for years distributed, despite the lack of any documentation.

From the first moments around the Chernobyl catastrophe began to grow frightening myths have been reported hundreds of thousands of victims of mass epidemic of cancers and horrible genetic changes. American tabloid National Inquirer a few days after the accident posted a drawing of a two-meter-sized chicken allegedly caught near Chernobyl by Soviet hunters. “The New York Post,” the 30th April 1986., Four days after the accident, gave on the first page: “Mass grave of 15 thousand. bodies pushed down by bulldozers to nuclear pits. ” Chernobyl deaths proliferated in the media like mushrooms after rain, and the pictures and movies as victims of radiation were shown children with leukemia or affected by severe developmental disorders.

Meanwhile, studies of international organizations such as the United Nations Scientific Committee. Effects Atomic radiation (UNSCEAR), world Health Organization (WHO) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) showed consistently that the radiation in the areas evacuated on average, smaller than the natural radiation in many parts of Europe and the world, where for centuries lived and will live people.

doses, which will receive over 70 years of age residents of different countries caused by natural radiation, shown above next dose in the Chernobyl area, caused by natural radiation and the additional radiation caused by Chernobyl. You can see it, that lasted evacuation was unnecessary. People who remained injunction against the evacuation in highly contaminated sites around Chernobyl will receive from radiation-induced failure of an additional 310 mSv over 70 years of age. This is a dose smaller than the difference in the doses over the life of the inhabitant of Finland (510 mSv) and Polish (below 200 mSv). Doses in the areas of low, medium and high contaminated are LESS than the average doses in Finland, in large parts of Sweden, France and other countries. And yet no one proposes to evacuate residents of Helsinki and the Massif Central in France!