Chernobyl: Undercounting the victims serves to prop up the nuclear power interests.

Several prestigious publications have recently made the absurd claim that radiation from the Chernobyl accident 10 years ago did little harm to human health. Instead, it is said, victims’ irrational fears of radiation have caused almost all the reported illnesses.

The unseen hand behind this view is the international radiation health establishment, an anachronistic vestige of the Cold War. As people who aided bomb makers, nuclear power plant owners and medical radiologists, its practitioners have always been strongly motivated to underestimate the health consequences of radiation. The truth might have put them out of business.

Because of their inside government access, the International Commission on Radiation Protection and its national affiliates have dominated worldwide regulation of radiation. As a result, the U.S. Department of Energy and its predecessor, the Atomic Energy Commission, have never funded open scientific debate about radiation health effects. They have forced out employees who dared disagree.

These agencies’ “experts” told us in 1952 that a yearly dose equal to 300 chest X-rays was safe. Now they restrict us to 1/15th that amount. The United Nations and British radiation agencies agree with critics that there is no safe dose, no matter how low, but the Americans refuse to believe it.

The 1991 “expert” study of Chernobyl’s consequences was sponsored by the International Atomic Energy Agency, whose U.N. charter orders it “to accelerate and enlarge the contributions of nuclear power” worldwide. Hence, 200 international experts concluded, 10% to 15% of downwind residents still need medical treatment, but only because of groundless radiation fears. Radiation harmed no one.

But the “experts” were wrong. They missed the beginnings of a thyroid cancer epidemic that has since swelled to 1,000 cases.

They also intentionally left out the people most contaminated by Chernobyl radiation: the 660,000 decontamination workers and 130,000 evacuated residents.

And their no-link conclusion is fatally flawed because they “guesstimated” rather than measured residents’ huge early exposures.

Most victims of Chernobyl no longer receive compensation. Governments in the most affected territories, Belarus and Ukraine, are in no position to continue financing Chernobyl-related problems. One official noted that meeting Chernobyl victims’ 1996 needs would cost 20% of Ukraine’s annual budget.

The initial fallout of radioactive iodine has caused a leap in thyroid diseases in those two countries. The soil is iodine-deficient, hence children’s thyroid glands were especially susceptible to airborne radioiodine. Before the Chernobyl accident, three or four children a year got thyroid cancer in Belarus and Ukraine. Today, the annual rate is more than 150.

Workers who participated in the Chernobyl cleanup suffer from various health problems. Most have skin, respiratory and digestive diseases. Their leukemia rate is double that of the population at large. Six thousand Ukrainian workers have died.

Chernobyl’s effects have exacerbated a general crisis in health care. Since 1986, Belarus and Ukraine have experienced an alarming increase in infectious diseases. They now suffer double the rate of infant mortality of the U.S., and male life expectancy has dropped to less than 60 years. In both countries, the population is shrinking.

In contaminated zones we visited last year, local farmers acknowledged that they have been “living off the land” since the accident. Most cannot afford to do otherwise. Some mothers have opted for abortions rather than bear children, aware of widespread congenital defects.

According to one survey, more than 52% of the people living in contaminated regions suffer from “psychic disorders,” “’psychological fears and tension.” Soviet authorities dismissed such fears as “radiophobia.” The reality is that the population has no faith in its future. Regional officials cannot resolve its problems, and international experts maintain there are no problems to resolve.

Yuri Shcherkak, Ukraine’s ambassador to the United States, told an international conference recently that to deny that Chernobyl caused a health crisis in Ukraine is akin to denying the existence of gas chambers in Nazi death camps.

If 10 years later there is no consensus about the impact of Chernobyl, one must conclude that some people do not wish to know the truth. The lessons of Chernobyl are being ignored.