The death toll from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster 20 years ago could be far higher than official estimates, a Greenpeace report said today.
Based on research by the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, the report said that of the two billion people globally affected by the Chernobyl fallout, 270,000 will develop cancers as a result, of which 93,000 will prove fatal.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) estimates 4,000 people died as a result of the explosion in reactor number four at the power plant in the Ukrainian town of Chernobyl on April 26th, 1986.
The explosion sent a plume of radioactive dust across northern and western Europe and as far as the eastern United States.
"It is appalling that the IAEA is whitewashing the impacts of the most serious nuclear accident in human history," said Greenpeace anti-nuclear campaigner Ivan Blokov.
The IAEA was not immediately available for comment.
The Greenpeace report further extrapolates that in total some 200,000 people in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus could have already died as a result of medical conditions - such as cardiovascular diseases - attributable to the disaster.
"Our problem is that there is no accepted methodology to calculate the numbers of people who might have died from such diseases," Greenpeace campaigner Jan van de Putte said. "The only methodology that is accepted is for calculating fatal cancers," he said.
The report said the incidence of cancer in Belarus jumped 40 per cent between 1990 and 2000, with children not even born at the time now showing an 88.5-fold increase in thyroid cancers.
Leukaemia is also reported to be on the increase in the region, as are cases of intestinal, rectal, breast, bladder, kidney and lung cancers.
The relocation of hundreds of thousands of people as a result of the explosion has put further strains on the population, the report said.