Revision 1
March 19, 1998
by Radiation, Science, and Health, Inc.,
Edited by J. Muckerheide

1.2.5
Weapons and Facility Releases

1.2.5.2
Public

1.2.5.2.1
Chernobyl/Urals

"The late effects were expected to occur among three categories of persons: 1) 106 persons who survived acute radiation sickness after receiving very high doses of radiation, 2) several million inhabitants of contaminated regions in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia who received doses comparable to their average natural lifetime dose, and 3) 600,000 to 800,000 accident recovery workers (‘liquidators’) who received similar doses in the 30-km zone around the Chernobyl reactor (Table 1). Estimates of imaginary post-Chernobyl cancers were also made for hundreds of millions of people in the Northern Hemisphere who received from Chernobyl fallout tiny fractions of the natural radiation dose. For example, for United States where Chernobyl increased the natural radiation background dose by 0.004% an exact number of 30 cancer death was predicted over the next 50 years, and 28,000 for the Northern Hemisphere, where radiation dose was increased by 0.3% (Goldman et al. 1987)."

"At the moment of the accident, there were about 470 people on the site of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant: 1) personnel on-duty (about 200 persons); 2) construction workers (about 250 persons); and 3) firemen on-duty and guards (about 20 persons). Among them, 134 (about one third) were diagnosed with acute radiation sickness (ARS) (Ilyin 1995). These ARC patients received high radiation doses, and 28 of them died in the first four months following the accident (Table 1). Deaths in 26 of these patients were associated with radiation skin lesions involving over 50% of the total body surface area. Two more patients died during the first days as a result of severe thermal burns and mechanical trauma. One further death was thought to have been due to coronary thrombosis. Thus, the total number of deaths due to early effects of the Chernobyl accident amounts to 31."

"Over the last ten years 14 persons have died of the 106 ARS patients who survived the acute phase. These later deaths (due to car accident, lung gangrene, coronary heart disease, tuberculosis, thigh sarcoma etc.) are rather not attributable to radiation exposure (Wagemaker et al. 1996). However, follow-up of these patients needs to be assured for the forthcoming two or three decades, to distinguish between any radiation related diseases of these patients and confounding factors intrinsic to the population."

"The late effects among the inhabitants of contaminated regions can be estimated from epidemiological observations and on the basis of radiation doses received by them from the deposited radionuclides. The greatest contamination covered several regions in Belarus, Ukraine and Russia, often in the form of ‘islands’, tens and hundreds of kilometers away from Chernobyl. Contamination with 137Cs above 185 kBq/m2 covered 1,530 km2 in Belarus, 8,130 km2 in Russia, and 4,630 km2 in the Ukraine (Anonymous 1996A). About 1.06 million people lived in these regions. Even at the regions contaminated above 555 kBq/m2, only a small number of persons (about 670) received radiation doses per whole body higher than 200 mSv in the years 1986-1989 (Table 2). Below the dose of 200 mSv epidemiological studies in Hiroshima and Nagasaki did not find increased incidence of cancers (UNSCEAR, 1994). However, in the former Soviet Union a mass relocation of people from the areas of still lower 137Cs contamination (>37 kBq/m2) was carried out (Anonymous 1996B). ‘Islands’ of high contamination also covered regions remote from the former USSR. For example, in the Oppland region of Norway contamination with 137Cs, reached 104 kBq/m2 (Backe et al. 1986). and in the Gavle region in Sweden about 200 kBq /m2 (Snihs 1996). Such islands, where radiocesium contamination reached up to 120 kBq/m2 were found in Greece, Romania, Switzerland, Austria, and Southern Germany."

"The average deposition density of Chernobyl 137Cs in Europe outside the former USSR ranged from 20 Bq/m2 in Portugal to 23,000 Bq/m2 in Austria. In Poland the average 137Cs deposit from Chernobyl of 5000 Bq/m2 was similar as that from the nuclear weapon tests (UNSCEAR 1988)."

"The fatalities of the Chernobyl accident caused by ionizing radiation, are 28 victims who succumbed to acute radiation sickness. Three more persons died during the first few weeks due to non-radiation factors of the catastrophe. Thus, the total of the early victims amounts to 31 persons. Over the next ten years 3 children died due to thyroid cancers, but it is not certain whether these three fatal cancers, and 679 other thyroid cancers registered until the end of 1995, were caused by Chernobyl radiation. Meticulous studies of Swedish patients in which no increase of thyroid cancer was found after average radiation doses from radioiodine higher than from Chernobyl fallout in the former USSR, indicate that these cancers apparently have not been caused by Chernobyl accident.

"The average whole body radiation doses from Chernobyl fallout to populations of contaminated region of the former Soviet Union were slightly smaller than the average global natural lifetime dose, and by a factor of 4 to 40 smaller than in regions with high natural radioactivity. Even smaller doses were received in other countries. Therefore, it should not be surprising that no increase in the incidence of solid cancers, leukemias or hereditary diseases that might be caused by the whole body doses of Chernobyl radiation, was detected in the populations of the former Soviet Union and elsewhere."