Chernobyl reactor explosion impacts greater than claimed, especially for children

Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment, claims that by 2004, 985,000 additional deaths worldwide were caused by the disaster, 212,000 of them within European Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. These numbers contrast greatly with the United Nations’ Chernobyl Forum 2006 estimate of 9000 cancer deaths in the same areas for the period of 90 years after the meltdown. Children have been and continue to be particularly affected with multiple adverse health outcomes. Before Chernobyl exploded, eighty percent of children were considered healthy. After the explosion only twenty percent of children are healthy in some areas.

This report summarizes published data from the many regions contaminated by radioactive fallout, and is based on over 5000 studies, most of which were not available in English or outside of the former Soviet Union. Contact the New York Academy of Sciences to purchase a copy www.nyas.org. See Beyond Nuclear’s press release for more detail.

Higher birth-defect rate seen in Chernobyl area counters UN reports

Reuters reports that higher-than-normal rates of certain birth defects plague one Ukrainian region affected by fallout from the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power reactor explosion. The findings were reported in April’s journal of Pediatrics and counter a 2005 United Nations report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) which stated that there was no increase in birth defects. Dr. Wladimir Wertelecki, researcher at the University of Southern Alabama, says that this official conclusion had a “chilling effect” on study of prenatal disease and that these findings show more research is needed into congenital defects, especially in regions of chronic, low-dose radiation.