Publicatie Laka-bibliotheek:
Chernobyl 20 years on; Health Effects of the Chernobyl accident
Auteur | ECRR, C.Busby, A.Yablokov |
2-34-8-11-33.pdf | |
Datum | april 2006 |
Classificatie | 2.34.8.11/33 (TSJERNOBYL - ONGELUK & OMGEVING - MEDISCH/MUTATIES) |
Voorkant |
Uit de publicatie:
Introduction One of the first sub-committees formed by the European Committee on Radiation Risk (ECRR) was the Chernobyl sub-Committee. Its remit was to examine the epidemiological and other evidence on the health effects of low dose radiation exposure which could be obtained from careful study of populations living in areas contaminated by the Chernobyl accident. The ECRR had been founded on the basis that many scientists had criticised the external acute exposure foundations of the current radiation risk model (employed by all countries for radiation protection purposes), the model, essentially, of the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP). This model, it was argued, was scientifically invalid for internal chronic irradiation from fission product isotopes and radioactive microscopic particles. It seemed to the committee that the Chernobyl catastrophe represented a unique opportunity or natural laboratory to examine the health effects of such low- dose internal exposures. Knowledge obtained from such studies would be valuable in developing an accurate understanding of the effects of radiation, and also in interpreting the many reports of apparent associations between cancer, leukaemia or other ill health and prior exposures to internal radionuclides e.g. from weapons test fallout, and nuclear site discharges. Indeed, the question of the adequacy of the ICRP external risk model had been called into question for many years by a number of independent scientists and, with the rapid developments of radiation biology in the 1990s following the discovery of ‘genomic instability’, by the early 2000s calls were increasingly being made to re-examine the issue. In 2001, following much anecdotal evidence of increases in ill health in the Chernobyl affected territories of the ex-Soviet Union, and also reports of increases in infant leukaemia in European countries in the children who were in the womb over the period of the internal exposures, the European Parliament called for the re- examination of these models specifically in connection with the effects of the Chernobyl accident. Also in 2001, in the UK, a new committee was set up under the joint direction of the Department of the Environment and the Department of Health. The remit of this Committee Examining Radiation Risk from Internal Emitters (CERRIE) was to examine just these issues. In 2003 CERRIE organised an international workshop in Oxford and most of the major radiation risk experts in the world were invited to attend to discuss the issues and comment on the draft reports. Most did so. Among those who came were the eminent scientists Professors Alexey Yablokov, Elena Burlakova and Inge Schmitz Feuerhake. The Russian scientists drew attention to the many studies reported in the Russian language literature. These research papers on the Chernobyl effects were not being translated into English by the UN agencies, nor by the World Health Organisation (WHO). For this reason (they said) the terrible effects of low dose radiation in the Chernobyl affected territories were being ignored or glossed over. Surely CERRIE should attempt to examine the truly enormous amount of useful information that these Russian language reports represented? In the event, the CERRIE secretariat did nothing and the CERRIE committee ended in 2004 split on the issue of internal radiation with two reports being published in late 2004. Only the Minority CERRIE report reviewed some fifty of the main Russian studies and drew attention to the serious cancer and non-cancer effects following Chernobyl reported in the Russian journals. It is now the 20th anniversary of the accident and in the West nothing has changed. It as if none of these events ever occurred. Children continue to die of cancer near nuclear polluted sites, which still continue to release fission-product radioisotopes under licenses based on the IRCP model. Court cases are still lost by the enraged and desperate parents because judges still believe that the doses to the children were too low. Scientists on government committees still talk about ‘absorbed dose’ as if it were a meaningful concept for internal irradiation. The Emperor still wears his new clothes. The evidence from the Chernobyl affected territories, presented here in these chapters, reveals the real-world consequences of a simple and terrible new discovery: that the effects of low dose internal irradiation cause subtle changes in the genome that result in an increase in the general mutation rate. This genomic instability was first seen in cells in the laboratory. The Chernobyl evidence, presented here, shows that this seems to be true for all species, for plants and animals and humans. It has profound implications that go beyond radiation protection and risk models. In the review paper by Krysanov in this collection we find that mice living in the high irradiation zone, 22 generations after the initial exposure, are more radiosensitive than mice living in lower exposure areas. The same effect is reported for plants by Grodzhinsky who wryly points out that plants cannot exhibit the ‘radiophobia’ that many of the Chernobyl effects have been blamed on. This flies in the face of current ideas about genetic selection. The effects of genomic instability are apparent in the evidence of massive harm to the organs and systems of living creatures at low doses of internal exposure, resulting in a kind of radiation ageing associated with random mutations in all cells. At the higher doses in the ‘liquidators’, after some years, their bodies seem to simply fall apart. In an astonishing statement we hear from Yablokov that in Moscow 100% of the liquidators are sick, in Leningrad 85%. These are men that ran like hares into the radiation fields with improvised lead waistcoats cut from roofs and who, by stabilising the situation at the reactor, saved Europe from a nuclear explosion equivalent to 50 Hiroshima Bombs - an outcome that would have made most of it uninhabitable. They are forgotten. Whole biological systems collapse; at the cell level, at the tissue level and at the population level. Burlakova and Nazarov describe these subtle effects at lower doses of internal irradiation in laboratory cell systems and also people, Grodzhinsky shows the effects in plants, - higher for internal exposures than external, Krysanov shows the effects in wild animals and Yablokov and the Nesterenkos in the children and adults living and continuing to live in the contaminated territories. The effects clearly operate at what are presently thought to be vanishingly low doses. The increases in infant leukaemia in several countries in Europe flag up the extreme dissonance between the IRCP model and the true effects. This finding has been ignored by the WHO. The papers are not referenced in UNSCEAR or in the recent US BEIR VII report. The comparison between the expected and observed cases of infant leukaemia gives a clear indication of an error of upwards of 150-fold in the current model’s prediction. This is shocking. It means that the previous releases to the environment from accidents, from weapons tests or under licence have killed and will still kill millions. The effects of the 1960s atmospheric weapons tests are with us and our children forever and are clearly responsible for many of the current illnesses. It is a scandal that UN agencies charged with protecting the public - e.g. the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) or the World Health Organisation (WHO) - can ignore the huge amount of evidence from the Chernobyl accident that shows these effects. This evidence has been presented to them again and again. Yet in the WHO conference on Chernobyl in Kiev in 2001 the representative of UNSCEAR, Norman Gentner stated clearly: The risk of leukaemia doesn’t appear to be elevated even among the recovery workers. No scientific evidence for increases in cancer incidence or other non- malignant disorders that could be related to the accident. Science moves forward through experiment and through observation. The radiation risk model presently used to underpin legal constraints on public exposure is based mainly on the theory that the external acute radiation effects in the Japanese A-Bomb survivors can be used to predict and explain effects from exposure to internal novel fission-products that never existed on earth for the whole of evolution. The Chernobyl accident and its appalling outcomes have given the human race the empirical evidence to test this theory. The observations made or reviewed in these extraordinary chapters - many written by eminent scientists- makes it fundamentally clear that the present radiation risk model is flawed. The ECRR sub-committee on Chernobyl has worked hard under difficult conditions to assemble the contributions from these eminent scientists and to put them into reasonable English. This book represents a landmark on the road to understanding the effects of low-dose chronic irradiation. The committee believe that these lessons should be borne in mind by policy makers who are, even now, discussing new investments in nuclear energy and ways in which historic and future radionuclide waste can be disposed of into the environment. The committee recommends this book to scientists and policymakers and concerned members of the public in the hope that the huge amount of work carried out by scientists publishing their results in Russian language journals and others studying the effects of the Chernobyl accident will influence their decisions in this important area of public health. The Committee thanks Greta Bengtsson, Mireille de Messieres and Saoirse Morgan for their hard work in the preparation of this book. Chris Busby, Scientific Secretary, ECRR