Betreff: Rosalie Bertell |
Von: Dorothee Krien |
Datum: Sun, 24 Jun 2007 21:54:27 +0100 |
As there is
a renewed interest in building new nuclear power plants, the real impact of the
Chernobyl disaster should be realized. Rosalie Bertell's articles are a
help to learn about the devastating effects of ionising radiation.
Dorothee
There is an informative website http://www.ratical.org/radiation/index.html
The Health Costs of Low-Level
Ionizing Radiation
50+ years of Lethal Deception
by what has become
the International Nuclear Mafia
This
site is dedicated to providing information about
the health costs of man-made low-level ionizing radiation.
Bibliography on Radiotoxic and Chemotoxic Properties of Depleted
Uranium (DU) http://www.ratical.org/radiation/DU/
http://www.xs4all.nl/~stgvisie/VISIE/AvoidableTragedyPostChernobyl.html
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 focussing on one aspect of a complex situation
in order to give a snapshot view of its magnitude. For example, one might
read in the newspaper that a "six alarm fire" had occurred in
some neighbourhood. This immediately conjures up the image of a very
large fire requiring six fire stations to send trucks to the scene.
It gives one no clue as to the magnitude of loss of life or property, the water
or smoke damage, the impact on human lives and health, ecological impact,
etc. Another example is that of a television show rating scale. If
you see an estimate of five million viewers of some special event television,
you immediately understand that this is a "rounded number" meant for
comparison only, and which does not reveal how many people actually watched the
show. Certainly some televisions played to an empty room and some to a
large number of people watching the display in the local pub .It gives no indication
of whether the watchers reacted positively or negatively to the
programme. If the event is important, we expect professionals to fill in
the details later.
Another
misleading human custom is presenting an event as "small" when there
exist more traumatic forms of the event. For example, the radiation
exposure to depleted uranium in the Gulf War is presented as "small"
in the face of a nuclear holocaust. Such exposure is not
"small" for the victims.
Unfortunately,
many government officials, physicists, engineers have used this tactic to
deliberately minimize the health effects of radiation, and, in particular the
immense suffering after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. For example, some
people actually believe that the magnitude of a nuclear accident can be gauged
by the potential number of cancer deaths it will cause, and further, that
cancer death is the only consequence! Minimalist reporting occurred after
the Three Mile Island accident, downwind of nuclear weapon testing, and at
serious military accidents like the one which spread plutonium in farm land in
Spain. Most recently it has attempted to deny that exposure to depleted uranium
weapons has caused severe health damage to the military veterans and the
civilians in Iraq, Kosovo and most likely, in Afghanistan.
The
minimalist reporting went even further with Chernobyl. The IAEA (International
Atomic Energy Agency) and UNSCEAR (United Nations Scientific Committee on
Atomic Radiation) recent statement that "only 32 deaths occurred, 200 were
heavily irradiated and 2000 avoidable thyroid cancers" resulted from the
Chernobyl disaster goes well beyond a mathematical short hand which gives
immediate sketch about a disaster. This fifteen-year-later report about a
complex painful situation should be much more precise
and believable! It rather tries to obliterate from peoples minds
and concerns the suffering of millions of persons in rural and un-evacuated
areas who were exposed, and hundreds of thousands evacuated but not medically
examined victims. When one probes a little more deeply, one finds that
the honest scientists and physicians, trying to explain the widespread injuries
and long term effects of nuclear exposure have been silenced.
In
fact immediately after the disaster of April 26, 1986, due to IAEA
policy, unless a person had been declared
"overexposed" at the medical tent set up for the
"liquidators" of the disaster, he or she was officially considered to
be a "radio-phobia" case, a purely psychological
phenomenon. Local physicians told people that there would be no medical
effects of exposure, until, perhaps in ten or twenty years
they may happened to develop cancer. But, not to worry! These
future radio-genic cancers would be indistinguishable from
"natural" cancers. The physicians soon learned from
direct evidence of pathological injuries that this information from the
physicists was less than candid. It was not surprising to learn that those who
tried to minimize the disaster were the same people charged with promoting
nuclear industries, for example, marketing nuclear reactors to the developing
nations.
The
experience of Chernobyl is not unique, but follows the secrecy
pattern used at many lesser accidents which were mishandled in the same
way. This has occurred both in the developed and developing
world. In particular, I would note the radioactive pollution of the
Mitsubishi Asian Rare Earth facility in Bukit Merah, Malaysia, the radioactive
waste dumped in Nigeria and the contaminated food distributed to Egypt, Papua
New Guinea, India and other countries during the Chernobyl disaster clean up.
However,
the health problems due to Chernobyl continue to be very acute right now,
and demand international attention and action. Scientists and physicians
are deprived of their freedom, and the people, especially the children, are
suffering. This crisis can serve to point out the serious secrecy,
vested interest and collusion of international agencies protecting nuclear
technologies. The public face of the nuclear industry has been "clean and
safe". It is important to unmask this public face, serving as a warning to
economically developing countries deciding on energy technologies and bringing
needed humanitarian aid to the victims. Preserving the false image of nuclear
technology keeps the industry and nuclear agencies in business.
Lessons from Hiroshima
and Nagasaki:
Unlike
the general study of toxic materials, handled by Toxicologists, the
field of radiation and health has been dominated by physicists,
engineers and mathematicians since the dawn of the nuclear era in
1943. Their health related communications differ radically in
content from similar communications of health professionals in
Toxicology, Occupational or Public Health.
This
field of radiation health was, with a few exceptions, taken over by the
physicists of the Manhattan Project after World War II, in their effort to
contain the secrets of the nuclear age. Radiation was an effect of the
atomic bomb. Secrecy caused these "hard scientists" to fail to
consider the broad range of responses and varieties of
vulnerabilities possessed by a living population
exposed to this hazard. Such variation in biological
responses would have been expected by health professionals..
Because
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, most people now know about acute radiation exposure
syndrome, with vomiting, hair falling out, alterations in blood cells, etc.,
and this bit of information has been translated into a naive belief on
the part of the public, that unless acute radiation sickness has been
documented (often by the government physicists) any subsequent severe illness
observed in radiation exposed persons is due to something, anything, but not
radiation exposure. This has some historical validity, but at Chernobyl
with millions of exposed persons in rural un-evacuated areas,
hundreds of thousands evacuated but not medically examined, and with the
population's continuous ingestion of contaminated foods for the past fifteen
years, demanding documentation of radiation sickness is ridiculous. Even
in the Japanese cities radiation sickness went undocumented for many
victims. Radiation injury is not predicated on documentation of acute
radiation sickness, but rather on the alteration of a cell leading to a fatal cancer.
It is well documented the these cellular level events can occur well below the
level of exposure which causes overt sickness. The amount of energy
released by just one nuclear transformation of one atom of a radioactive
material is measured in thousands or millions of electron volts. It
requires only 6 to 10 electron volts to break the molecular bounds in the
cellular DNA and RNA which carry the genes for life.
In
Hiroshima and Nagasaki (1945), exposure and subsequent health records
were not complete. The research stations did not begin to select a study
population until after the 1950 Japanese census identified survivors and a 1967
dose estimate was derived by the scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in
the U.S.. Deaths prior to 1950 were ignored. Death certificates,
which were at times incomplete, were used to determine first cause of
death of the study population. Cancers which were not fatal were
not reported until 1994. Most survivors are still alive so their
"cause of death" has not yet been studied. Other non-cancer
health problems were considered to be "not of concern" and have not
been systematically reported.
There
were persons who entered the contaminated territories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
after the fire died down, or who consumed radioactive contaminated food and
water, who experienced radiation sickness, but were not officially recognized
as "exposed". They are in the radiation exposure control group. This
is easily explained to the mathematician, who is told that the Hiroshima and
Nagasaki studies looked for the effects of the immediate penetrating radiation
from the exploding bomb on the persons who were within three kilometres of the
hypocenter at that moment. For the military person looking for
information on the health effects of radiation due to the bomb, this
artificial limitation made some sense. However, if a civil society
is seeking information on the effects of man-made radiation on the human
body, then all sources of that man-made radiation, including that from nuclear
fall-out, food and water contamination, residual radioactive debris at the bomb
site, etc., is important. Changing the definition of "exposed to man-made
radiation" to mean "exposed to the bomb", and then using this
research to back public and occupational health policy is problematic to say
the least!
Because
of this concentration on the first flash of the atomic bomb, serious mistakes
have been made by the radiation physicists in estimating the biological damage
done by ingested or inhaled radioactive particles, many of which remain in the
body for a long time and even enter into biochemical reactions of the cell's
genetic material.
It is
this atomic bomb study which appears to be dictating much of the inappropriate
behaviour of officials with respect to the medical treatment of survivors of
Chernobyl and other nuclear accidents. It has also caused harsh treatment of
the honest scientists and physicians who spoke directly for the needs of the
exposed suffering people. Many of these scientists and physicians, now in
prison or effectively silenced, have conducted well designed and executed
scientific studies.
Due to
the complications generated by the study of external irradiation by a bomb
being used to evaluate civilian exposures to inhaled or ingested radioactivity,
and the use of this research to educate young physicists and nuclear
engineers, many scientific blunders and administrative problems
were generated. The failure to deal with the whole breadth of radiation
problems became entrenched in the very agencies which were created in the
1950's to protect the public at risk from atmospheric nuclear testing. I will
try to unravel the problems with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA),
the United Nations Scientific Committee on Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR), the
International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP), the U. S. National
Academy of Science Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation Committee (BEIR)
and the World Health Organization(WHO). All of these organizations,
except WHO, which was relegated to treating the victims rather than
understanding the problem, play key parts with respect to current
radiation and public health policies and understandings. Ironically, the
World Health Organization, created by the United Nations in 1948, was not given
any role in the health assessment of this global threat to human and ecological
health.
United Nations
Initiatives:
Nuclear
bombs were first used in war in 1945, when the U. S. used them against Japan in
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As early as 1946, the U. S. began atmospheric
testing of nuclear bombs in the Marshall Islands, in the Pacific Ocean. The
former Soviet Union demonstrated that it had the nuclear bomb in 1949, and
there was tangible fear of a nuclear exchange during the Korean War. The U.K.
began nuclear weapon testing off the coast of Australia in the 1950s, and then
on the continent itself and in the Pacific Islands.
The
first atomic bombs were based on fission, and because of this they were
limited in their destructive power. The force of the explosion blew apart
the fissioning materials, terminating the explosive energy release. In
1954 the U. S. tested a thermonuclear device (hydrogen bomb), called Bravo, at
Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands, demonstrating that a nuclear device with
unlimited power could be built. This one was about one thousand times
more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb. It was this military
accomplishment which prompted the "Peaceful Atom" speech of President
Dwight Eisenhower before the United Nations in 1954.
The
speech followed a shift in U. S. Military Policy to dependence on nuclear bombs
and a rush toward production of uranium and the technology necessary to
carry this out a major weapon replacement programme: uranium mining and
milling, uranium processing facilities, nuclear fuel fabrication facilities,
nuclear production reactors, reprocessing facilities and the hazardous
transportation and waste associated with each of these industries. In
order to obtain American and global cooperation during peace time, there was a
perceived need for commercial or so called "peaceful uses" of
nuclear technologies which would justify everyone's cooperation in
the nation and the international community. Nuclear electrical
production was billed as capable of fulfilling all of the energy needs of
the developing world, and being "too cheap to meter". It was promoted
as the hope of preventing future wars since no country would be in need!
The
United Nations responded by creating in 1955, UNSCEAR (Res 913(X) 1955) to
"assess and report levels and effects of exposure to ionizing
radiation". According to the UNSCEAR website, "governments and
organizations throughout the world rely on the Committee's estimates as the
scientific basis for evaluating radiation risk, establishing radiation
protection and safety standards, and regulating radiation exposure."
UNSCEAR was envisioned as an organization of physicists, who at that time
were the only ones who could measure radiation since it escapes our senses and
requires specialized instruments for detection. They were the experts on the
hazard of ionizing radiation, but failed to have the expertise to predict the
varied human response to exposure to this hazard. In an odd way, perhaps
because of their training in physics, they managed to average all exposures
over the entire population of the world, now some six billion people. Natural
background, because it is ubiquitous, rather homogeneously exposes
everyone. However a localized accident or relatively small work
force's exposure, when averaged over the whole population can be made to seem
trivial. It is not trivial to those who receive the exposure!
UNSCEAR
became primarily a reporting agency, detailing the measurement of radioactive
fallout, worker exposures and eventually emissions from nuclear power plants. I
would assume that legislators saw this agency as providing independent
monitoring of nuclear activities as a check on predicted pollution and
theoretical estimates of harm. Unfortunately, UNSCEAR incorporated into
its midst those same scientists who were making the predictions and estimating
"no harm from low level radiation". No other industry is
allowed to monitor itself. We do not ask the tobacco companies to tell us
about tobacco's harm, or the pesticide companies to tell us the effects of
their products on children. More on this point later.
In
1957, in response to the "Peaceful Atom" speech, the U.N. also
established the IAEA, which describes itself as "an independent intergovernmental,
science and technology based organization, in the U. N. family, that
serves as the global focus point for nuclear cooperation." Its mandates is
described as: "to promote peaceful uses of nuclear technology, develop
safety standards, and verify that nuclear weapon technology did not
spread horizontally to the non-nuclear Nations". They had no mandate
with respect to the nuclear weapons of the five nuclear states. Because of
their nuclear watch-dog task, IAEA reports directly to the U.N. Security
Council.
Response of the World
Health Organization:
In
1957, the World Health Organization, which had been founded by the U.N. in
1948, became alarmed about the atmospheric nuclear testing and the proposed
expansion of this technology for "peaceful uses". It called
together eminent geneticists to consider the threat this exposure would pose to
the human and ecological gene pool. Prof. Hermann Muller, the
geneticist who received a Nobel Prize for his work on genetic mutations of the
fruit fly, using ionizing radiation, in 1944, was a participant at this
conference. Although the United States had not sent him as its delegate,
he received a standing ovation at the conference for his work, and he
consistently opposed extension of nuclear technology into civilian uses. The
conclusion of this expert group was that there was not enough information
available in the scientific community to assure the integrity of future
generations should the burden of ionizing radiation exposure be
increased. They called for extreme caution and further genetic
investigations, especially in Kerala, India, where there is a high natural
background level of radiation, and people have lived in this environment for
hundreds of years. These recommendations were never implemented by
governments anxious to get on with nuclear activities.
Later
an independent NGO in India studied genetic damage in the high radiation
background area and found it indeed significantly increased. An Article
by B.A.Bridges in Radiation Research (Vol 156, 631-641; 2001) suggests that
genetic mutations due to radiation imply that "the nature of the radiation
dose response cannot be assumed". There is more complexity than was
expected in the health consequences of changed DNA sequences. The serious
implications of nuclear pollution for future generations is still an area of
research demanding more than ordinary caution.
One
can guess at the politics behind a second WHO conference, called later in 1957,
of Psychiatrists to consider the Public Health impact of peaceful nuclear
activities. These professionals concluded that such activities could
cause undo stress to the population because of the association with the atomic
bombs. One finds that this has become a mantra for the physicists who have
subsequently controlled all information relative to the health impact of
nuclear technologies. Most recently, when UNSCEAR released its 15 year
assessment of the Chernobyl disaster one of its spokespersons, Dr. Neil Wald,
Professor of Occupational and Environmental Health at the University of
Pittsburgh School of Public Health, stated: "It is important that public
misperceptions be reduced as much as possible in this area, because unwarranted
perception and fear of harm can itself produce avoidable health problems, as
well as erroneous societal benefit vs risk judgements." Loosely
translated, Dr. Wald appears to be saying: "if the public gets upset
we will not be able to make our money with this nuclear technology".
After
the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, in response to the people's demand for
a health study, the government organized a study headed by a Psychiatrist from
the Annapolis Naval Academy. He drew concentric circles around the failed
nuclear reactor and compared the cancer rates and also the levels of fear and
tension of those living with in these layers. A sensible study would have
looked down wind for air borne radionuclide effects, and down stream for the
water borne effects. This official study found only fear, which was
positively correlated with distance from the plant.
There
were about 2000 injury cases from the TMI population taken to court
for compensation of health damage due to the radiation exposure. The
nuclear company fought all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court against the courts
even hearing these cases, and lost. Then the industry found an old law
stating that an expert witness must use the methodology used by other
professionals in their field, and using this, the nuclear company managed to
disqualify every expert witness (physicians, epidemiologists, botanists,
biologists) brought in by the victims. The physicists and engineers
claimed sole expertise in the area of radiation health effects. All cases
were dismissed by the court without one being heard.
A 1959 Deal Between WHO
and IAEA:
This
potential conflict between those who wished to exploit the new nuclear
technology for both profit and military power, and the custodians of the public
health, was superficially resolved by an Agreement (Res. WHA 12-40, 28 May
1959) stating that the IAEA and the WHO recognize that ..."the IAEA has
the primary responsibility for encouraging, assisting and coordinating research
on, and development and practical applications of atomic energy for peaceful
uses throughout the world without prejudice to the right of the WHO to concern
itself with promoting, developing, assisting and coordinating international
health work, including research, in all its aspects." If the reader
is confused, so is the writer. To understand this, one needs to know that the
health effects of radiation were classified as secret under the U.S. Atomic
Energy Act for national security. The "international health
work" assigned to the WHO was taking care of the victims. While
technically the IAEA and WHO are "equal" in the U.N. family, those
agencies which report directly to the Security Council, as does IAEA, have more
status.
In
Article I (3) of the WHO/IAEA agreement, it is stated that "Whenever
either organization proposes to initiate a programme or activity on a subject
in which the other organization has or may have a substantial interest, the
first party shall consult with the other with a view to adjusting the matter by
mutual consent". This clause seems to have weakened the WHO from
investigating the Chernobyl disaster, and gave the IAEA a green light to bring
in physicists and medical radiologists to assess the damage relative to their
limited knowledge of the health effects of radiation. (Note: while radiologists
use ionizing radiation in their work, they deal with health damage only after
the patient receives therapy levels of radiation.) This first evaluation used a
different epidemiological protocol in each geographical area and with
different age groups, eliminated all concern for cancers as not having
sufficient latency periods and failed to note the extraordinary epidemic of
thyroid diseases and cancers. From the point of view of Medical Epidemiology
they failed miserably to deal with the reality. The director of this 1991
Epidemiological study, Dr. Fred Mettler, is a Medical Radiologist. There
were no Epidemiologists, Public Health professionals or Toxicologists on the
IAEA Team.
The Self-Established
ICRP:
UNSCEAR
has continued to be the measurement agency, which verifies that all planned
releases of ionizing radiation to the environment, and all exposures of
workers, are "acceptable". It fell to the IAEA to
"establish or adopt, in collaboration with other competent international
bodies, standards of safety for the protection of health and to provide for the
application of these standards".
Neither
the IAEA nor UNSCEAR turned to the WHO to develop such protective health
standards. Instead they both turned to a self-appointed non-governmental
organization formed by the physicists of the Manhattan project together with
the Medical Radiologists, who had organized themselves in 1928 to protect
themselves and their colleagues from the severe consequences of exposure
to medical X-ray.. This new organization, called the ICRP (International
Commission on Radiological Protection), has a Main Committee of 13
persons who make all decisions. Members of this Main
Committee were originally self appointed, and have been perpetuated by being
proposed by current members and accepted by the current executive
committee. No outside agency can place a member on the ICRP, not even the
WHO.
The
UNSCEAR 2000 Report was prepared by a Committee including the following
seven persons who also serve on the thirteen person Main Committee of
ICRP: Prof. Roger Clark (currently the Chair of ICRP), Prof. Rudolf
M. Alexakhim, Dr. John D. Boice Jr., Prof. Fred A. Mettler Jr.(the same radiologist
who headed the IAEA Chernobyl epidemiological study), Dr. Zi Quiang Pan, and
Dr. Yasuhito Sasaki.
It is
the ICRP which makes recommendations for the protection of human health
for workers and the general public. By their own admission, they are not
a public or environmental health organization. They have given themselves
the task of recommending a trade-off of predictable health effects of exposure
to radiation for the benefits of nuclear activities (including the production
and testing of nuclear weapons). Their recommendations were first set in
1957, when the medical radiologists accepted the proposal which had been
hammered out by the British, Canadian and American physicists after World War
II.
The
original recommendation that workers be allowed 15 rad (150 mSv) per year was
opposed by the British NRPB and an independent committee called the BEAR
(Biological Effects of Atomic Radiation) funded in the U.S. by the Rockefeller
Foundation. This forced the ICRP to reduce their recommendation for
nuclear workers to 5 rad (50 mSv) per year. Maximum permissible
doses for members of the public were ten times lower. This recommendation
remained in effect until 1990, when under pressure from more than 700
scientists and physicians, and after a reassignment of doses at the atomic bomb
research centres, the worker exposure was reduced to 2 rad (20 mSv) per year,
while exposures to the public were reduced by another factor of five to
0.1 rad (1 mSv) per year.
Who Takes
Responsibility?
It is
important to note that no agency takes responsibility for these
recommendations, and the WHO is excluded from professional collaboration or
comment on them. ICRP recommends, and the Nations are free to implement
or not these recommendations. The Nations generally accept ICRP recommendations
claiming that they do not have the expertise or money to derive their own
standards. The recommendations are for a risk benefit trade off, and do not
pretend to be based solely (or primarily) on protecting the public or worker
health.
IAEA
states: "The underlying biological basis of the standards over the
last several decades has rested primarily on the UNSCEAR. This
Committee was originally formed during the period of atmospheric weapon testing
to assess the physical processes and health effects of fall out, but has since
broadened its remit considerably".
UNSCEAR
contains and depends on the leaders of the Main Committee of
ICRP. Those who set the standards also judge them to be adequate! Usually
scientific theory is tested against reality and rejected if it fails to
conform. Radiation health predictions are tested against the reality of
the victims, and if reality fails to conform to theory, reality is
rejected. The suffering is blamed on some unknown cause!
Another
body that also assesses radiation risk is the BEIR Committee of the U.S.
National Academy of Science. The BEIR (Biological Effects of
Ionizing Radiation) Committee was established in the U.S. around
1978 to counter accusations that the Nevada atmospheric
nuclear tests had caused the deaths of thousands of American
babies. BEIR is essentially a report and interpretation of the
Hiroshima and Nagasaki studies of the effects of the atomic bomb, as
previously discussed. These atomic bomb studies do not underpin the
radiation standards, which actually were established some 17 years before
the 1967 dose assessment for atomic bomb survivors on which the atomic bomb
studies are based was completed.
IAEA
radiation standards for nuclear waste were made "on the basis of recommendations
by a number of international bodies, principally ICRP, and estimations of
radiation risks made by UNSCEAR . IAEA Safety Requirements for
radioactive waste, including standards, codes of practice, regulations, etc.,
"may be adopted by Member States at their own discretion for use
nationally". These IAEA requirements are mandatory only for the IAEA
itself.
What
happened to the people of Chernobyl?
One
can easily imagine that there were civilian victims of radiation sickness in
the midst of the chaos during and after the Chernobyl disaster who were never
seen at Hospital Six in Moscow! However, the IAEA (International Atomic Energy
Agency) continues, even in 2002, to insist that only 32 persons died of
radiation exposure at Chernobyl! These "counted" deaths
were all men from the fire fighting brigade identified as seriously
exposed and sick by the heroic physicians and other health personnel at the
emergency medical tent near the crippled reactor. This type
of counting goes even further than the usual mathematical and journalistic
approach - it deliberately and maliciously minimizes the scale of this disaster
and leaves the public vulnerable. Those who were exposed
suffer without appropriate medical recognition and help, while those at a
distance remain unprepared for another, perhaps worse, disaster.
Moreover,
since the land contaminated by the failed reactor was poisoned, the fruits and
vegetables grown on it, and the domestic animals who feed on it, and their milk
and meat, are also contaminated. Russia, Ukraine and Belarus have
taken this contaminated food and with the advise of the IAEA, have mixed it
with un-contaminated food from other parts of the
former Soviet Union. This diluted (or adulterated) food has
been given to the people to eat, subjecting them to
continuous low doses of internal contamination with radionuclides for the
last fifteen years. In Belarus, people actually received money from
the government for moving back onto the badly contaminated
areas and setting up new farms.
The
false claims of the IAEA have also failed to rally the
international community to help the victims of this disaster. People have
not responded internationally, with their characteristic generosity, to
the tremendous needs of the people whose heath and lives were cruelly
disrupted.
The
IAEA and its companion body, UNSCEAR (United Nations Scientific Committee on
the Effects of Atomic Radiation) have gone even further in the Spring of 2002,
by recommending that Chechen and Central Asian refugees re-populate the
still contaminated area around the failed reactor. This raises some very
serious questions about the mismanagement of information and
communication around this serious disaster.
These
two UN agencies, namely, IAEA and UNSCEAR (and their partner the ICRP),
have apparently supplanted the WHO (World Health Organization) in speaking to
the health risks of this nuclear technology, and in particular, to
the post-Chernobyl contamination of the people and the land. Whether or
not this land is fit for inhabitation, or for food production requires health
assessment, not a promotional OK from two agencies which have financial ties to
the polluting industry!
The
WHO tried to take some initiative on behalf of the suffering people, and in
1996 its Director-General, Dr. Hiroshi Nakajima, organized in Geneva an
international conference with 700 scientific experts and physicians, many of
whom came from Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. The IAEA, which to its dismay
was not invited to jointly sponsor this international conference,
nevertheless blocked publication of the proceedings.
The
physicians of Chernobyl then organized a conference in Kiev,
Ukraine, in June 2001, and invited Dr. Nakajima (who was no longer
Director-General of WHO) to be their Honorary President. He was asked
about the proceedings of the 1996 WHO Conference about the health of the
Chernobyl victims which had never been published. He answered as follows:
"I was the Director-General and I was responsible. But it is mainly
my legal department... Because the IAEA reports directly to the Security
Council of the United Nations. And we, all specialized organizations,
report to the Economic and Social Development Council. The organization
which reports to the Security Council, - not hierarchically, we are all equal
-, but for atomic affairs ... military use ... and peaceful or civil use ...
they have the authority".
Because
of the internal UN structure, which is grossly out of date, the voice of the
physicians and scientists actually dealing with the situation were not
heard. It is outrageous to measure the radiation and then present a
theory that no one has been hurt! It is imperative to look at the victims
and assess their injury. Internationally, the theoretical voice of the ICRP, an
NGO, which speaks through the IAEA and UNSCEAR, has prevailed! All three
agencies have a vested interest in maintaining the reputation of nuclear
industries as "clean and cheap", even if they arn't!
The
representative of the U.N. Office for Humanitarian Affairs, D. Zupka, was
present at the Kiev Conference, and he shared with participants the view of
Kofi Annan, who estimated that the number of victims of Chernobyl is nine
million! They are predicting that this number will increase. However,
their voice is overpowered by the "scientific" voice of the ICRP
speaking through the IAEA and UNSCEAR. This seems incredible, but is the
heavy burden which we suffer as a legacy of the nuclear secrecy.
Because
of the self-serving theoretical predictions and safety recommendations of
the ICRP which colour the expectations of these radiologists,
physicists and engineers, even when they are confronted with the reality
of the suffering of the Chernobyl victims, these scientists strongly
declare that the observed health problems could not be due to the
radiation exposure. Health problems are instead assigned to an
unidentified factor in the environment or life-style. Hans Blix,
Director of the IAEA at the time of the Chernobyl disaster, went so far as to
say: "The atomic industry can take catastrophes like Chernobyl every
year". There is an obvious conflict of interest for this agency mandated
to promote nuclear technologies!
At the
Kiev Conference, Alexey Yablokov, President of the Centre for Political Ecology
of the Russian Federation, pointed out that the data used by UNSCEAR had been
falsified by the State Committee for Statistics, and the officials were
arrested in 1999 for this crime. He charged that UNSCEAR continued to use
this falsified data to support its minimization of harm.
The
medical research of Prof. Y Bandazhevsky, a medical pathologist, Rector of the
Medical Institute of Gomel, in Belarus, had to be presented by a colleague,
Prof. Michel Fernex. Prof. Bandazhevsky was under house arrest. Belarus
received the heaviest fall out from the Chernobyl disaster. After nine years of
research in Chernobyl-contaminated territories, he had discovered that cesium
137 incorporated in food, leads to destruction of those vital organs where the
cesium 137 concentrates at higher than average body levels. With his
wife, a paediatric cardiologist, Bandazhevsky described what he called
"cesium cardiomyopathy", and which others say is a syndrome which
will eventually be named after him. The cardiac damage becomes irreversible at
a certain level and duration of the cesium intoxication. Sudden death may
occur at any age, even in children. After publishing this finding,
denouncing government non-intervention policy, and arguing against the lack of
resources given to the medical investigation of the disaster,
Bandazhevsky was arrested, tried and condemned to prison for eight years.
The
trial of Prof. Bandazhevsky was observed by lawyers from the Organization for
Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), from the French Embassy in
Minsk, and from Amnesty International. These observers documented
irregularities and legal errors from the time of his arrest. In the middle of
the night of July 13,1999, Prof. Bandazhevsky was arrested by a group of police
officers, who informed him that the arrest was by presidential decree aimed at
fighting terrorism. This was never charged in court. In fact, it
was not until four weeks after his arrest, August 1999, that he was
finally charged with taking bribes. These proved to be trumped up charges
by two defendants who later recanted their testimony saying it was forced under
duress and threats. Prof. Bandazhevsky was denied access to a
lawyer for the entire duration of his detention, and during the trial there
were serious breaches of Belarussian and international Law. Amnesty
International has listed Prof. Bandazhevsky as a prisoner of conscience. He
is not well, and his important research is being kept from his scientific and
medical colleagues.
Professor
Bandazhevsky is not alone. The Russian, Belarussian, and Ukrainian
medical community, though silenced in international circles, was still present
and active in alleviating the suffering and noting the causes of their people's
pain. Many have carried out detailed high quality scientific
studies on the genetic, teratogenic and somatic damage done by radiation
exposure. They have confirmed their analyses by demonstrating the effects
in animal experiments. The rest of the world is being deprived of this research
through heavy handed silencing of the scientists by their national authorities,
acting on the recommendations of the IAEA and UNSCEAR (and especially ICRP).
Recommendations:
While
many individuals have been trying to make known this major U,N, problem, it has
been difficult to get this complex situation across to the public in
"sound bites". Serious study on the part of the U.N. will be
needed to undue all of the damage caused. However, it seems possible to
make the following recommendations to the United Nations:
1.
WHO should be mandated to review all radiation research and to recommend health
based safety regulations. This mandate should be carried out by health
professionals, including epidemiologists, oncologists, occupational and public
health specialists, geneticists and paediatricians, (not linked with the
nuclear industries or nuclear medicine) rather than other scientists.
2.
The IAEA mandate to promote "peaceful nuclear technologies" should be
withdrawn.
3.
The IAEA mandate to safeguard the spread of nuclear weapons should be expanded
to include monitoring the reduction and abolition of all nuclear weapons in the
nuclear nations.
4.
The UNSCEAR mandate needs to include the monitoring of
increasing levels of background radiation and nuclear emissions
from reactors and nuclear accidents. They should not be entrusted with
estimating risk, which is the prerogative of the WHO.
5.
Decisions relative to the safety of farm land, food and water ingestion and
refugee relocation should be entrusted to WHO.
6.
Investigation into the imprisonment of scientists and physicians who have
spoken out on behalf of the public health relative to radiation exposure should
be undertaken by a special raporteur of the Human Rights Commission in Geneva.
13.
Radioactive Contaminants Found in US Water Supply (SW U.S.) http://204.255.211.112/ColdFusion/News_Page1.cfm?NewsID=6404&start=141 EarthVision Reports,
02/09/99 NEW YORK, February 9,
1999 -- A government watchdog organization that calls itself the
Environmental Working Group released a statement this week saying the Associated Link:
Environmental Working Group http://www.ewg.org/ |