Avoidable Tragedy post-Chernobyl A Critical Analysis Rosalie Bertell, Ph.D., G.N.S.H. President Emerita of the International Institute of Concern for Public Health Member of the Board of Regents, International Association of Humanitarian Medicine Journal of Humanitarian Medicine, Vol. II, No. 3, pp 21 - 28. Introduction: Journalists and mathematicians have a way of example, some people actually believe that the focussing on one aspect of a complex situation magnitude of a nuclear accident can be gauged in order to give a snapshot view of its by the potential number of cancer deaths it will magnitude. For example, one might read in the cause, and further, that cancer death is the only newspaper that a “six alarm fire” had occurred consequence! Minimalist reporting occurred in some neighbourhood. This immediately after the Three Mile Island accident, downwind conjures up the image of a very large fire of nuclear weapon testing, and at serious requiring six fire stations to send trucks to the military accidents like the one which spread scene. It gives one no clue as to the magnitude plutonium in farm land in Spain. Most recently it of loss of life or property, the water or smoke has attempted to deny that exposure to depleted damage, the impact on human lives and health, uranium weapons has caused severe health ecological impact, etc. Another example is that damage to the military veterans and the civilians of a television show rating scale. If you see an in Iraq, Kosovo and most likely, in Afghanistan. estimate of five million viewers of some special event television, you immediately understand The minimalist reporting went even further with that this is a “rounded number” meant for Chernobyl. The IAEA (International Atomic comparison only, and which does not reveal how Energy Agency) and UNSCEAR (United many people actually watched the show. Nations Scientific Committee on Atomic Certainly some televisions played to an empty Radiation) recent statement that “only 32 deaths room and some to a large number of people occurred, 200 were heavily irradiated and 2000 watching the display in the local pub .It gives no avoidable thyroid cancers” resulted from the indication of whether the watchers reacted Chernobyl disaster goes well beyond a positively or negatively to the programme. If mathematical short hand which gives immediate the event is important, we expect professionals sketch about a disaster. This fifteen-year-later to fill in the details later. report about a complex painful situation should be much more precise and believable! It rather Another misleading human custom is presenting tries to obliterate from peoples minds and an event as “small” when there exist more concerns the suffering of millions of persons in traumatic forms of the event. For example, the rural and un-evacuated areas who were exposed, radiation exposure to depleted uranium in the and hundreds of thousands evacuated but not Gulf War is presented as “small” in the face of a medically examined victims. When one probes nuclear holocaust. Such exposure is not “small” a little more deeply, one finds that the honest for the victims. scientists and physicians, trying to explain the widespread injuries and long term effects of Unfortunately, many government officials, nuclear exposure have been silenced. physicists, engineers have used this tactic to deliberately minimize the health effects of In fact immediately after the disaster of April radiation, and, in particular the immense 26, 1986, due to IAEA policy, unless a person suffering after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. For had been declared “overexposed” at the medical 1 tent set up for the “liquidators” of the disaster, Unlike the general study of toxic materials, he or she was officially considered to be a handled by Toxicologists, the field of “radio-phobia” case, a purely psychological radiation and health has been dominated by phenomenon. Local physicians told people that physicists, engineers and mathematicians since there would be no medical effects of exposure, the dawn of the nuclear era in 1943. Their until, perhaps in ten or twenty years they may health related communications differ radically happened to develop cancer. But, not to worry! in content from similar communications of These future radio-genic cancers would be health professionals in Toxicology, indistinguishable from “natural” cancers. The Occupational or Public Health. physicians soon learned from direct evidence of This field of radiation health was, with a few pathological injuries that this information from exceptions, taken over by the physicists of the the physicists was less than candid. It was not Manhattan Project after World War II, in their surprising to learn that those who tried to effort to contain the secrets of the nuclear age. minimize the disaster were the same people Radiation was an effect of the atomic bomb. charged with promoting nuclear industries, for Secrecy caused these “hard scientists” to fail to example, marketing nuclear reactors to the consider the broad range of responses and developing nations. varieties of vulnerabilities possessed by a living population exposed to this hazard. Such The experience of Chernobyl is not unique, but variation in biological responses would have follows the secrecy pattern used at many lesser been expected by health professionals.. accidents which were mishandled in the same way. This has occurred both in the developed Because of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, most and developing world. In particular, I would people now know about acute radiation exposure note the radioactive pollution of the Mitsubishi syndrome, with vomiting, hair falling out, Asian Rare Earth facility in Bukit Merah, alterations in blood cells, etc., and this bit of Malaysia, the radioactive waste dumped in information has been translated into a naive Nigeria and the contaminated food distributed to belief on the part of the public, that unless acute Egypt, Papua New Guinea, India and other radiation sickness has been documented (often countries during the Chernobyl disaster clean up. by the government physicists) any subsequent severe illness observed in radiation exposed However, the health problems due to Chernobyl persons is due to something, anything, but not continue to be very acute right now, and radiation exposure. This has some historical demand international attention and action. validity, but at Chernobyl with millions of Scientists and physicians are deprived of their exposed persons in rural un-evacuated areas, freedom, and the people, especially the children, hundreds of thousands evacuated but not are suffering. This crisis can serve to point out medically examined, and with the population’s the serious secrecy, vested interest and continuous ingestion of contaminated foods for collusion of international agencies protecting the past fifteen years, demanding nuclear technologies. The public face of the documentation of radiation sickness is nuclear industry has been “clean and safe”. It is ridiculous. Even in the Japanese cities radiation important to unmask this public face, serving as sickness went undocumented for many victims. a warning to economically developing countries Radiation injury is not predicated on deciding on energy technologies and bringing documentation of acute radiation sickness, but needed humanitarian aid to the victims. rather on the alteration of a cell leading to a fatal Preserving the false image of nuclear cancer. It is well documented the these cellular technology keeps the industry and nuclear level events can occur well below the level of agencies in business. exposure which causes overt sickness. The amount of energy released by just one nuclear Lessons from Hiroshima and Nagasaki: transformation of one atom of a radioactive material is measured in thousands or millions of 2 electron volts. It requires only 6 to 10 electron volts to break the molecular bounds in the Because of this concentration on the first flash cellular DNA and RNA which carry the genes of the atomic bomb, serious mistakes have been for life. made by the radiation physicists in estimating the biological damage done by ingested or In Hiroshima and Nagasaki (1945), exposure inhaled radioactive particles, many of which and subsequent health records were not remain in the body for a long time and even complete. The research stations did not begin to enter into biochemical reactions of the cell’s select a study population until after the 1950 genetic material. Japanese census identified survivors and a 1967 dose estimate was derived by the scientists at It is this atomic bomb study which appears to be Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the U.S.. dictating much of the inappropriate behaviour of Deaths prior to 1950 were ignored. Death officials with respect to the medical treatment of certificates, which were at times incomplete, survivors of Chernobyl and other nuclear were used to determine first cause of death of accidents. It has also caused harsh treatment of the study population. Cancers which were not the honest scientists and physicians who spoke fatal were not reported until 1994. Most directly for the needs of the exposed suffering survivors are still alive so their “cause of death” people. Many of these scientists and physicians, has not yet been studied. Other non-cancer now in prison or effectively silenced, have health problems were considered to be “not of conducted well designed and executed scientific concern” and have not been systematically studies. reported. Due to the complications generated by the study There were persons who entered the of external irradiation by a bomb being used to contaminated territories of Hiroshima and evaluate civilian exposures to inhaled or Nagasaki after the fire died down, or who ingested radioactivity, and the use of this consumed radioactive contaminated food and research to educate young physicists and nuclear water, who experienced radiation sickness, but engineers, many scientific blunders and were not officially recognized as “exposed”. administrative problems were generated. The They are in the radiation exposure control group.