Sir, - My thanks to Frank Turvey (May 9th) for bringing to public attention results on the health effects of Chernobyl from the UNSCEAR 2000 report. This United Nations report, which is probably the most authoritative source, is two volumes long and so is unlikely to be read by many. A summary appears in the editorial of the Radiological Protection Bulletin published by the National Radiation Protection Board (UK) and on the web at www.nrpb.org.uk/Rpb223.htm. This report states that the only direct observable health effect is the 1,800 treatable childhood thyroid cancers which occurred among about 3 million children in the area.
In your edition of April 27th, the 15th anniversary of the accident, an article stated that 4,000 of the clean-up crews (liquidators) were now dead, the inference being that this was a direct effect of the radiation. It is not surprising that a large number of the 300,000 or so liquidators are now dead, due to the normal mortality over 15 years. The fact is that studies of the liquidators show that the cancer rate among them is in fact lower than that of the unexposed population.
It should also be noted that no excess in birth defects has been observed at Chernobyl. This is in agreement with studies of the atomic bomb survivors in Japan. A joint US-Japan government supported research organisation, the Radiation Effects Research Foundation (RERF), recently reported on a study on about 80,000 children born to bomb survivors between 1946 and 1984. It says that no major birth defects were observed.
It should be noted that many indirect effects of Chernobyl have been reported (e.g. depression, suicides and abortions). These were largely due to fear, not helped by poor public information at the time, and to the major social disruption caused. Fear was also the main problem with the Three Mile Island incident in the US, where there were no deaths or no direct health effects.
Spreading myths on radiation health effects just promotes fear of a technology which has many beneficial applications. - Yours, etc.,
Philip W. Walton, Professor of Applied Physics, NUI, Galway.