Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment. Edited by Alexey V. Yablokov, Vassily B. Nesterenko, Alexey V. Nesterenko, and Janette D. Sherman-Nevinger. Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. 400 pages ISBN: 978-1-57331-757-3

     Published by the New York Academy of Sciences. It is authored by three noted scientists: Russian biologist Dr. Alexey Yablokov, former environmental advisor to the Russian president; Dr. Alexey Nesterenko, a biologist and ecologist in Belarus; and Dr.Vassili Nesterenko, a physicist and at the time of the accident director of the Institute of Nuclear Energy of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus. Its editor is Dr. Janette Sherman, a physician and toxicologist long-involved in studying the health impacts of radioactivity.

reviewed by Karl Grossman
Op-Ed News, September 3, 2010

(Karl Grossman is a professor of journalism at the State University of New York/College at Old Westbury and host of the nationally syndicated TV program Enviro Close-Up.)

     This past April 26th marked the 24th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear plant accident. It came as the nuclear industry and pro-nuclear government officials in the United States and other nations were trying to “revive” nuclear power. And it followed the publication of a book, the most comprehensive study ever made, on the impacts of the Chernobyl disaster.

     The book is solidly based on health data, radiological surveys and scientific reports — some 5,000 in all.
     It concludes that based on records now available, some 985,000 people died, mainly of cancer, as a result of the Chernobyl accident. That is between when the accident occurred in 1986 and 2004. More deaths, it projects, will follow.
     The book explodes the claim of the International Atomic Energy Agency – still on its website that the expected death toll from the Chernobyl accident will be 4,000. The IAEA, the new book shows, is underestimating, to the extreme, the casualties of Chernobyl. Alice Slater, representative in New York of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, comments:
     "The tragic news uncovered by the comprehensive new research that almost one million people died in the toxic aftermath of Chernobyl should be a wake-up call to people all over the world to petition their governments to put a halt to the current industry-driven 'nuclear renaissance.' Aided by a corrupt IAEA, the world has been subjected to a massive cover-up and deception about the true damages caused by Chernobyl."
     Further worsening the situation, she said, has been "the collusive agreement between the IAEA and the World Health Organization in which the WHO is precluded from publishing any research on radiation effects without consultation with the IAEA." WHO, the public health arm of the UN, has supported the IAEA's claim that 4,000 will die as a result of the accident.
     "How fortunate," said Ms. Slater, "that independent scientists have now revealed the horrific costs of the Chernobyl accident."
     The book also scores the position of the IAEA, set up through the UN in 1957 "to accelerate and enlarge the contribution of atomic energy," and its 1959 agreement with WHO. There is a "need to change," it says, the IAEA-WHO pact. It has muzzled the WHO, providing for the "hiding" from the "public of any information" unwanted" by the nuclear industry.
     "An important lesson from the Chernobyl experience is that experts and organizations tied to the nuclear industry have dismissed and ignored the consequences of the catastrophe," it states.
     The book details the spread of radioactive poisons following the explosion of Unit 4 of the Chernobyl nuclear plant on April 26, 1986. These major releases only ended when the fire at the reactor was brought under control in mid-May. Emitted were "hundreds of millions of curies, a quantity hundreds of times larger than the fallout from the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki." The most extensive fall-out occurred in regions closest to the plant – in the Ukraine (the reactor was 60 miles from Kiev in Ukraine), Belarus and Russia.
     However, there was fallout all over the world as the winds kept changing direction so the radioactive emissions "covered an enormous territory."
     The radioactive poisons sent billowing from the plant into the air included Cesium-137, Plutonium, Iodine-131 and Strontium-90.
     There is a breakdown by country, highlighted by maps, of where the radionuclides fell out. Beyond Ukraine, Belarus and Russia, the countries included Bulgaria, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Sweden and the United Kingdom. The radiological measurements show that some 10% of Chernobyl poisons "fell on Asia Huge areas" of eastern Turkey and central China "were highly contaminated," reports the book. Northwestern Japan was impacted, too.
     Northern Africa was hit with "more than 5% of all Chernobyl releases." The finding of Cesium-137 and both Plutonium-239 and Plutonium-240 "in accumulated Nile River sediment is evidence of significant Chernobyl contamination," it states.

     The book also examines the impact on plants and animals.
     "Immediately after the catastrophe, the frequency of plant mutations in the contaminated territories increased sharply."
     There are photographs of some of these plant mutations.
     "Chernobyl irradiation has caused many structural anomalies and tumorlike changes in many plant species and has led to genetic disorders, sometimes continuing for many years," it says. "Twenty-three years after the catastrophe it is still too early to know if the whole spectrum of plant radiogenic changes has been discerned. We are far from knowing all of the consequences for flora resulting from the catastrophe."
     As to animals, the book notes "serious increases in morbidity and mortality that bear striking resemblance to changes in the public health of humans — increasing tumor rates, immuno-deficiencies, and decreasing life expectancy."
     In one study it is found that "survival rates of barn swallows in the most contaminated sites near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant are close to zero. In areas of moderate contamination, annual survival is less than 25%." Research is cited into ghastly abnormalities in barn swallows that do hatch: "two heads, two tails."
     "In 1986," the book states, "the level of irradiation in plants and animals in Western Europe, North America, the Arctic, and eastern Asia were sometimes hundreds and even thousands of times above acceptable norms."
     In its final chapter, the book declares that the explosion of the Chernobyl nuclear plant "was the worst technogenic accident in history." And it examines "obstacles" to the reporting of the true consequences of Chernobyl with a special focus on "organizations associated with the nuclear industry" that "protect the industry first — not the public." Here, the IAEA and WHO are charged.
     The book ends by quoting U.S. President John F. Kennedy's call in 1963 for an end of atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons.
     "The Chernobyl catastrophe," it declares, "demonstrates that the nuclear industry's willingness to risk the health of humanity and our environment with nuclear power plants will result, not only theoretically, but practically, in the same level of hazard as nuclear weapons."
     Dr. Sherman, speaking of the IAEA's and WHO's dealing with the impacts of Chernobyl, commented: "It's like Dracula guarding the blood bank." The 1959 agreement under which WHO "is not to be independent of the IAEA" but must clear any information it obtains on issues involving radioactivity with the IAEA has put "the two in bed together."
     Of her reflections on 14 months editing the book, she said: "Every single system that was studied —whether human or wolves or livestock or fish or trees or mushrooms or bacteria — all were changed, some of them irreversibly. The scope of the damage is stunning."
     In his foreword, Dr. Dimitro Grodzinsky, chairman of the Ukrainian National Commission on Radiation Protection, writes about how "apologists of nuclear power" sought to hide the real impacts of the Chernobyl disaster from the time when the accident occurred. The book "provides the largest and most complete collection of data concerning the negative consequences of Chernobyl on the health of people and the environment... The main conclusion of the book is that it is impossible and wrong to forget Chernobyl."
     In the record of Big Lies, the claim of the IAEA-WHO that "only" 4,000 people will die as a result of the Chernobyl catastrophe is among the biggest. The Chernobyl accident is, as the new book documents, an ongoing global catastrophe.
     And it is a clear call for no new nuclear power plants to be built and for the closing of the dangerous atomic machines now running — and a switch to safe energy technologies, now available, led by solar and wind energy, that will not leave nearly a million people dead from one disaster.

OBJECTIVE
     One of the populations most exposed to chronic low-dose radiation from Chornobyl (Chernobyl in Russian) lives in Polissia, the region representing the northern half of Rivne Province (Oblast) in Ukraine. Here the patterns and population rates of malformations are reported and possible etiologic factors and regional contrasts are explored.

PATIENTS AND METHODS
     Malformations, as defined by international standards, noted among all 96.438 births in Rivne between 2000 and 2006, were analyzed statistically. Contrasts of rates in Polissia compared with the rest of Rivne also were investigated.

CONCLUSIONS
     The malformation patterns observed suggest early disruptions of blastogenesis, manifesting as alterations of body axes, twinning, duplications, laterality, and midline formation. The results are sufficiently compelling to justify continuing and expanding this investigation of malformations in chronic low-dose radiation-impacted regions of Ukraine.

     Nearly 25 years after the worst nuclear accident in history, new scientific findings suggest that the effects of the explosion at Chernobyl have been underestimated. Experts last month published a series of studies indicating that, contrary to previous findings, populations of animals decreased in the exclusion zone surrounding the site of the former nuclear power plant, and that the effects of radioactive contamination after the outbreak had been "overwhelming."

     More and more pigs with high levels of cesium are found at the scene. This information was disclosed months after doctors detected increased rates of cancer in Ukraine and Belarus, mutations and diseases of the blood, which they believe are related to Chernobyl.
     Meanwhile, an American investigation published in April found an increase in birth defects, apparently due to sustained exposure to low level doses of radiation. 
     For activists against nuclear power, these studies demonstrate that the inhabitants of the affected area will suffer devastating consequences for decades, perhaps centuries. 
     "This is a problem that will not go away in few years. It will be there for centuries," said Rianne TeuleI, from the environmental organization, Greenpeace. 
     "The new research confirms that the problems are larger than what the World Health Organization (WHO) said in 2006 and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and will remain, and they will keep on existing and appearing in other studies. It is not anything that is going to go away soon," he added. 

     The disaster occurred in April 1986 after one of the blocks of the nuclear power plant exploded in what is now Ukraine. 
     It is estimated that the total radioactivity from Chernobyl was 200 times greater than the combined releases of nuclear bombs dropped by the United States in 1945 against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 
     The explosion and fire generated a huge radioactive cloud that spread across Europe, forcing the evacuation of 350,000 people in areas near the plant.