nuclear-news

Atmospheric Testing of Nuclear Weapons in the 1950s and 1960s

May 27, 2023, Dr Ian Fairlea,  https://www.ianfairlie.org/news/atmospheric-testing-of-nuclear-weapons-in-the-1950s-and-1960s/

Radioactive fallout from atmospheric nuclear weapons testing in the 1950s and 1960s caused the greatest exposure of man-made radiation to humankind.

The radiation dose to the world’s population from these tests was estimated by UNSCEAR in 1993 at 30 million person-sieverts, which was 50 times more than the 600,000 person-sieverts from the Chernobyl accident in 1986.

The cumulative explosive power of the tests corresponded to 545 million tons of TNT, equivalent to 40,000 atomic bombs of the size dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.

However surprisingly few epidemiological studies of the possible health effects of atmospheric testing have ever been conducted. The few that were carried out had inconclusive results: no clear signature of raised leukemias, for example, was observed. But we should always apply the strict rule in epidemiology that absence of evidence does not provide evidence of absence (Altman and Bland, 1993). It just means that we have not been able to find the evidence yet.

However Dr Alfred Körblein, an independent researcher in Germany, has just found clear evidence. He has just published (Körblein, 2023) the results of his own statistical study of data on infant deaths from UNSCEAR (1993) data and other sources. He concluded that, after the atmospheric bomb tests, infant deaths definitely increased both in the United States and in Europe including the UK. He hypothesised this was an effect of radioactivity from bomb fallout (from strontium-90) on the immune systems of pregnant women.

In more detail, what Körblein’s study shows is that the bomb tests resulted in very high levels of radioactive fallout which remained suspended in the northern hemisphere for years afterwards. He reproduces charts showing high levels of strontium-90 fallout: similar levels of radioactive caesium-137, carbon-14, iodine-131, hydrogen-3 (tritium) and other nuclides would also have occurred at the same time.

These radionuclides would have been inhaled and ingested by everyone in the northern hemisphere, including pregnant women. We know that the immune systems of developing embryos and fetuses in pregnant women are extremely sensitive to radiation. The evidence produced in the study clearly shows increased levels of perinatal deaths (between >24 weeks’ gestation and 7 days after birth) and neonatal deaths (within 28 days of birth) in several countries including the UK. In other words, the radioactivity from these bomb tests is thought to have produced teratogenic effects in the offspring of pregnant women in the years during and following the bomb tests.

Körblein concludes that “atmospheric nuclear weapons testing may be responsible for the deaths of several million babies in the Northern Hemisphere”. I agree with his analysis and his sobering conclusion.  Here is a rough cross-check. If we accept the dose modelling carried out by UNSCEAR in their 1993 estimate of 30 million person-sieverts (which I accept) and apply a commonly-used risk factor for fatal cancer of 10% per Sv, then we arrive at a crude figure of 3 million deaths – similar to Korblein’s estimate.

REFERENCES

Altman DG and Bland JM (1995) Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. British Medical Journal. 311 (19 August): 485. doi:10.1136/bmj.311.7003.485.

Körblein A (2023) Statistical modeling of trends in infant mortality after atmospheric nuclear weapons testing. PLoS ONE 18(5): e0284482. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0284482

UNSCEAR (1993) United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation. UNSCEAR 1993 report to the General Assembly. United Nations, New York.

May 29, 2023 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | children, Reference, weapons and war