AN expert on Chernobyl was accused by the Green Party of being "dangerously misleading" yesterday in his address to a Dublin conference.
Dr Peter Waight, a consultant involved in the World Health Organisation's final report on the Chernobyl programme, was the main speaker at a conference hosted by the Radiological Protection Institute of Ireland.
It was held to mark Chernobyl's 10th anniversary and was opened by the Minister of State for Energy, Mr Emmet Stagg.
In a statement issued after Dr Waight's address, the Green Party MEP, Ms Nuala Ahern, accused him of repeating the "mantra" of the International Atomic Energy Agency that the main health effects of Chernobyl were psychological, apart from thyroid cancer in children.
"I would ask the RPII to get a more balanced picture, and to invite a wider spectrum of experts in future," Ms Ahern said.
The Green Party councillor, Ms Claire Wheeler, accused Dr Waight of being "dangerously misleading".
Dr Waight said he had presented the consensus scientific view of the impact of Chernobyl 10 years after the event.
During his speech, Dr Waight referred to the psychological factor as one of a series of health effects stemming from Chernobyl.
Acute effects occurred among personnel working in the plant, fire fighters and those involved in the clean up and resulted in 28 recorded deaths, he said. He cited the most recent rates of child hood thyroid cancer, showing unequivocal increases in Belarus and the Ukraine.
More precise figures would be available 14 years after the accident, he said, when the rate of childhood thyroid cancer in the regions would probably fall and the rate in adults would rise.
The psychological effects might well constitute the "greatest indirect health impact", Dr Waight said. Fear, uncertainty, relocation, economic hardship, shortages and increased consumption of tobacco and alcohol in contaminated regions were all factors.
This had to be viewed in the context of the break up of the former Soviet Union and reduced funding for medical care.
Such factors had combined to reduce the general health and life expectancy of Russians a phenomenon described by one expert as "katastroika".
Ireland would use its EU presidency to urge the closure of Chernobyl, Mr Stagg said in his opening address. Chernobyl had blown the cover on the secrecy of the nuclear industry and national governments, the industry and the international community must now "come clean with the people".
"If they want to know whether nuclear power, civilian or military, is acceptable, let them hold a poll or plebiscite," he said.
Ireland opposed any net expansion of the industry, and had conveyed its concern about the inherent risks in all available forums, said Mr Stagg.
