Relief officials outraged at U.N. report downplaying Chornobyl disaster's toll (09/18/05)

Relief officials outraged at U.N. report downplaying Chornobyl disaster's toll

by Andrew Nynka

NEW YORK - Nearly two decades after the nuclear disaster at Chornobyl spewed a lethal cloud of radiation over Ukraine, Belarus and Russia, a United Nations report now says the actual death toll from the accident is far less than had been previously reported.

Outraged by the report, longtime Chornobyl aid workers and relief organizations have since strongly criticized the 600-page document, questioning the credibility and motivation of its authors, and calling its conclusions doubtful at best.

The report, titled "Chernobyl's [sic] Legacy: Health, Environmental and Socio-Economic Impacts," concluded that only several thousand people could potentially die of radiation exposure from the accident, and that fewer than 50 deaths can be directly attributed to the disaster.

"Claims have been made that tens or even hundreds of thousands of persons have died as a result of the accident," the report says. "These claims are exaggerated: the total number of people that could have died or could die in the future due to Chernobyl-originated exposure over the lifetime of emergency workers and residents of most contaminated areas is estimated to be around 4,000."

That information, as well as other parts of the report, has drawn strong criticism from Chornobyl relief organizations. "The notion that the deaths of only 4,000 of these workers and downwinders will be attributable to the accident is dubious at best," said Alexander Kuzma, executive director of the Children of Chornobyl Relief Fund, in the draft of a letter submitted to The New York Times.

The U.N. report was published by Chernobyl Forum and released on September 5 during a meeting of the forum at the International Atomic Energy Agency's headquarters in Vienna.

The forum, created in 2003 to address the nuclear fallout from the 1986 Chornobyl disaster, comprises eight U.N. agencies - including the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the World Health Organization (WHO) - and the governments of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine.

The report said that people who lived in contaminated territories have "died of diverse natural causes that cannot be attributed to radiation. However, widespread expectations of ill health and a tendency to attribute all health problems to exposure to radiation have led local residents to assume that Chernobyl-related fatalities were much higher."

Critics have voiced outrage recently over such statements, as well as strong skepticism of the IAEA's role in the report. They argue that the IAEA, a U.N. agency tasked with promoting and overseeing nuclear power throughout the world, influenced the report.

The report concluded that "the largest public health problem unleashed by the accident," rather than death or various radiation related illnesses, is "the mental health impact."

Dr. Fred Mettler, an expert with the World Health Organization and a member of the team of more than 100 international scientists who conducted research for and wrote the report, said stories from the press helped to greatly exaggerate the affects of radioactive fallout on people in the area.

"Early on there were all sorts of claims being made because people didn't have much accurate information," Dr. Mettler told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. "Now, at last, we have the eight U.N. agencies and the three governments involved coming to a consensus about the effects and what needs to be done."

Dr. Mettler, who is also a professor emeritus at the University of New Mexico, said the nuclear disaster at Chornobyl had become a crutch for the area's inhabitants. "People have developed a paralyzing fatalism because they think they are at much higher risk than they are."

Louisa Vinton, a spokeswoman for the U.N. Development Program, one of the eight U.N. agencies that worked on the report, commented on what was needed for people in the region.

"The most important need is for accurate information on healthy lifestyles, together with better regulations to promote small, rural businesses," Mrs. Vinton said in a joint statement released by her organization, the IAEA and the WHO. "Poverty is the real danger. We need to take steps to empower people."

But Chornobyl aid workers, many of whom have worked in the region for over a decade, say that people in the affected areas still suffer greatly from radiation-related illnesses. "The Ukrainian doctors we work with are too lacking in funds or public health research experience to do effective health studies on the terrible health effects they're seeing," Mr. Kuzma, the executive director of the Children of Chornobyl Relief Fund, said.

But Mr. Kuzma saved some of his strongest criticism for Dr. Mettler. "Dr. Fred A. Mettler, who was chosen as the team leader of the United Nations forum of 100 'experts,' was thoroughly discredited in 1992 after he repeatedly denied any increase in thyroid cancer in Chornobyl children," Mr. Kuzma wrote. Dr. Mettler could not be reached for comment.

Natalia Preobrazhenska, who heads Save the Ukrainian Children from the Chornobyl Catastrophe foundation and is a consultant to the Ukrainian Parliament's Committee on Radiation Security, also was angered by the report.

"I think it's time for the Hague court to look at our figures and at what the IAEA says," Mrs. Preobrazhenska told RFE/RL, referring to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands. "It's horrible, the IAEA statement is criminal."

Scientists have long held that the amount of radiation released during the Chornobyl disaster - over 185 million curies, or the equivalent of 270 Hiroshima-sized bombs - would levy a serious toll on the health of the region's population. In 1992 the British journal Nature documented a 100-fold increase in thyroid cancer in the region, though it also noted that thyroid cancer is usually rare in children.

"Despite their apparent bigotry toward their subjects and their paltry track record as predictors of Chornobyl's aftermath, Mettler and the IAEA have continued to exercise an undue influence over the international radiation health research establishment," Mr. Kuzma wrote.

Keith Baverstock, a former World Health Organization radiation scientist, said the lives of people living in contaminated areas had been "permanently blighted."

Mr. Baverstock was also concerned that the IAEA may have had too great an influence in the U.N. report. The study's assessment of radiation risks should be regarded with skepticism, he said in a September 5 interview with the journal New Scientist.

The Chernobyl Children's Project International, an Irish aid organization that works largely with Belarusian people affected by fallout from Chornobyl, also questioned the report.

"The exact impact of radiation on health, particularly the impact of exposure to low levels of radiation over a long period of time, has always been controversial and widely disputed, even between U.N. agencies," a statement by the organization said. "All too often the discussion has been clouded by the agendas of interest groups."

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