nuclear-news

The continuing cancer toll from Chernobyl

“In our report we say 6,800,” said Mettler. “But now, from what I understand people from Belarus say it is 7,000. Now the question they are asking is: what percent of them are due to the accident?  And the answer is, most of them.”…….

UN Reports Thousands of Thyroid Cancers 25 Years After Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster, Voice of America, Jim Brooke | Moscow February 28, 2011 Twenty five years after the explosion and fire at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, a United Nations report estimates the disaster caused thyroid cancer in more than 6,000 children in the affected area.  

The world’s worst nuclear accident caused thousands of cases of thyroid cancer among children, largely from drinking contaminated milk, according to a report by the U.N. Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation.

University of New Mexico Radiology Professor Fred Mettler contributed to the report.

“In our report we say 6,800,” said Mettler. “But now, from what I understand people from Belarus say it is 7,000. Now the question they are asking is: what percent of them are due to the accident?  And the answer is, most of them.”…….

University of Paris researcher Anders Moller has researched the Chernobyl area since it opened to the West after the 1991 fall of communism. He has maintained close contact with family members of the men and women who put out the nuclear fire, and encased the plant in cement.

“That group contains many thousands of people and the most recent estimate I have heard from this group is that hardly any of those are alive today,” said Moller………
Moller decided to discount the human social factors and to focus on studying animals and birds around Chernobyl.

“On average, they have a reduction in brain size of five percent, compared to normal birds,” he said.

From five to 10 percent of birds and other animals near Chernobyl suffered from physical abnormalities, but he says elsewhere in the wild this rate is “virtually nil.”

UN Reports Thousands of Thyroid Cancers 25 Years After Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster | Europe | English

March 1, 2011 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | health, Ukraine