Letter: Chernobyl deaths closer to 1 million
A recent Associated Press article vastly underestimated the human
death toll from the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power disaster in the former
USSR at between 9,000 and 90,000 when it may be closer to 1 million
("Soul still hurts 30 years after reactor explosion," April 27).
A report reprinted in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
(Vol. 1181) in 2009 provides the evidence. It is titled, "Chernobyl:
Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment" and was
authored by Alexey Yablokov, a biologist with the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, and Vassily Nesterenko, a biologist and ecologist, and Alexey Nesterenko, a physicist, both with the Institute of Radiation Safety in Minsk, Belarus.
Their report is based on a review of thousands of studies,
radiation surveys, doctoral theses and scientific reports, many printed
in eastern Europe in Slavic languages. They concluded that, by 2004,
Chernobyl had killed more than 800,000 people worldwide.
Among their conclusions were that: 1. Nearly two decades after the
catastrophe began, only 20 percent of the children in extensively
contaminated regions in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia were healthy
compared to 80 percent in 1985; 2. Genetic consequences "will impact
hundreds of millions of people" during the next few centuries; and 3.
"...serious increases in morbidity and mortality [in animals have been
observed] that bear striking resemblance to changes in the public health
of humans — increasing tumor rates, immunodeficiencies, decreasing life
expectancy (and) early aging."
Data: 17.05.2016
Fonte: www.timesunion.com
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