THE 20th ANNIVERSARY OF THE CHORNOBYL NUCLEAR DISASTER

Anniversary of Chornobyl sharpens debate over disaster's consequences

by Alexander B. Kuzma

Between April 24 and 26, Kyiv will be host to a historic gathering to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Chornobyl nuclear disaster. More precisely, there will be three simultaneous gatherings, each with its own perspective and emphasis, each playing its own key role in a historic drama that has been unfolding for several months now.

The official state-run conference hosted by the governments of Ukraine, Belarus and the Russian Federation will bring together the World Health Organization (WHO), the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United Nations Development Fund (UNDP) and other institutions that will be formulating the official government response to the disaster.

Titled "Chornobyl, A Look into the Future," this conference will be convened at the Ukrainian Home, the cavernous former Lenin Museum, and it will almost certainly adopt the September 2005 Chernobyl Forum report that downplayed the impact of the disaster and endorsed a greater reliance on nuclear energy. As intended, that report generated extensive coverage in major publications such as The New York Times, which immediately hailed its findings as "authoritative" and "definitive," and gave short shrift to many scientists who challenged its findings. The forum report gained further momentum after the IAEA and its president, Dr. Mohammed el-Baradei, were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their work on nuclear arms control. Although the award did not address the IAEA's role in promoting nuclear energy, it nonetheless served as a major boost to the agency's credibility after it had come under attack from the U.S. government in the lead-up to the Iraq War.

Arrayed against this powerful government-IAEA consortium will be a coalition of environmental organizations that will gather at the Budynok Uchytelia, the former Parliament building on Volodymyrska Street that in 1918-1919 housed the first Ukrainian government chaired by historian Mykhailo Hrushevsky. Organized by representatives of the European Parliament and the European Green Parties, this conference will outline the many health effects the Chernobyl Forum report ignored.

Titled "Chornobyl +20: Remembrance for the Future," this counterweight to the government report will also focus on the European community's progress in developing alternative energy sources and environmental health programs.

The third conference is hosted by the first lady of Ukraine, Kateryna Yushchenko, her charitable foundation Ukraine 3000 and the Children of Chornobyl Relief and Development Fund (CCRDF). This symposium, titled "Rebirth, Renewal and Human Development," will focus on the humanitarian response to Chornobyl and other disasters. It will seek to develop a series of recommendations for strengthening emergency preparedness, medical aid and community development programs that can overcome the effects of such tragedies.

All of this is taking place against the backdrop of last winter's energy crisis, when Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened to cut off natural gas supplies in a blatant (and ultimately successful) attempt to breach long-standing contracts and extort higher prices from Ukraine. Mr. Putin's threats came during the coldest winter in nearly 30 years, and they sent shock waves through all of Europe that relies heavily on Siberian gas supplies.

Even prior to this crisis, then-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko called for the construction of 11 new nuclear plants in Ukraine, and President Viktor Yushchenko suggested that Ukraine might consider creating an international atomic waste repository at or near the Chornobyl disaster site.

In 1986, Chornobyl was a dagger to the heart of the few nuclear construction programs that had survived the scare at Three Mile Island in 1979. Now the IAEA and the international nuclear industry hope to reverse the trend and use the 20th anniversary of Chornobyl as a dramatic turning point to overwhelm the opposition and to galvanize public support for a re-acceptance of nuclear expansion.

After all, if the Ukrainians who bore the brunt of Chornobyl's fallout can be persuaded to embrace nuclear power, why should the rest of the world resist?

Despite its Nobel Prize and Dr. el Baradei's unblemished reputation, the IAEA continues to suffer from a major credibility gap where Chornobyl is concerned. Dr. Fred Mettler, the IAEA's chief spokesperson on Chornobyl and the author of the 2005 Chernobyl Forum Report, was the same individual who testified at U.S. Senate hearings in 1992 that there was no increase in thyroid cancer following Chornobyl.

Five weeks after his testimony, the World Health Organization confirmed that there was an 80-fold increase in thyroid cancer in children living in or near contaminated areas. The thyroid cancer epidemic is not over. In Ukraine alone there are 9,000 children and young adults with pre-cancerous thyroid lesions.

The IAEA now concedes that it was wrong in its denials of a thyroid cancer epidemic, but would have us believe that no other health effects will be caused by the accident: according to the U.N. report, no genetic damage, no cardio-vascular illnesses, no immune deficiencies and no additional childhood leukemia can be linked to the disaster.

Just as they did in 1992, Dr. Mettler and his agency are claiming that their report is based on a "comprehensive" review of all the literature available on the Chornobyl aftermath.

There is a great deal of evidence that says otherwise.

Before President Yushchenko took office in 2005, many scientists and researchers who once labored under the shadow of the post-Soviet medical system were afraid to share their findings with the outside world. Many of the former health officials who presided over the cover-up and who denied the need to take protective measures still wielded enormous power in the Ukrainian medical establishment. They had a stake in downplaying the extent of the damage caused, and they had a major chilling effect on subordinates whose research revealed negative health effects.

With the new policies of free speech and freedom of the press fostered by President Yushchenko, a number of Ukrainian scientists have felt emboldened to bring their research studies into the clear light of day.

First, it is worth examining the actual death toll of the Chornobyl liquidators. Dr. Mykola Omelianets is a leading demographer with the Institute of Radiation Medicine in Kyiv. According to government registries, there were 344,000 Ukrainian liquidators who took part in the Chornobyl emergency clean-up. Of these, 34,400 or 10 percent have died between the years 1989 and 2004. Most of these were young men in their 20s and 30s at the time of the accident, and they are dying at a rate 2.7 times higher than working-age men across Ukraine.

Even more noteworthy is the fact that 25 percent of these deaths were caused by cancer, while the rate of cancer deaths among average Ukrainian males in the same age range is only 9.6 percent, an almost three-fold (2.7) difference. These excess cancer deaths would account for 8,600 liquidators - already twice the death toll estimated by the U.N. forum. And this data does not include the cancer impact on liquidators from other ex-Soviet republics, evacuees or people still living in contaminated territories. It also does not count liquidators who had died prior to 1989.

A parallel study by Israeli and Ukrainian scientists published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine in Britain found that the children of Chornobyl liquidators suffer from a sevenfold increase in chromosome damage as compared to their siblings born prior to the accident.

Extensive studies in the Institute of Pediatrics, Obstetrics and Gynecology (IPOG) in Kyiv and parallel studies in Belarus have documented the accumulation of radioactive cesium-137 in the stillborn fetuses and placentas of women exposed to Chornobyl radiation. Belarusian scientists have established a strong correlation between congenital deformities of the central nervous system with increased levels of cesium-137 in the placenta. Further evidence of Chornobyl's genetic impact has been gathered in Ukraine.

A program funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in the Volyn and Rivne oblasts has been tracking birth defects among 104,000 newborns (26,000 annually) since 2001. According to Dr. Wolodymyr Wertelecki, the team leader and chairman of Medical Genetics at the University of South Alabama, the rate of spina bifida among these children is four times higher than normal. If the normal rate is 3 cases per 10,000 newborns, across Ukraine it has risen to 12 per 10,000. More significant is the comparison with spina bifida among newborns from the northern districts of the Rivne Oblast which were heavily contaminated by Chornobyl fallout. There the rate was 28 per 10,000 - more than 9 times higher.

For the CCRDF's partner hospitals who work with newborn children, these statistics come as no surprise. As early as 1993, neonatal specialists began to notice many more cases of these unfortunate children with herniated tissue protruding from their bodies. Such cases had occurred even prior to Chornobyl, but very rarely, perhaps once every few years, while after Chornobyl, these cases began to multiply each year.

There are many other congenital malformations that have been documented by Belarusian and Ukrainian, Japanese and Italian scientists whose studies have been ignored by the IAEA: abnormally high rates of cleft palates, polydactilism (extra fingers or toes), microcephaly, deformed or missing limbs, stunted torsos, cataracts, and missing or deformed internal organs.

Several peer-reviewed studies have also found substantially higher rates of pregnancy complications among women living in contaminated villages, compared to women from relatively clean zones. These included intrauterine hypoxia of the fetus, pre-eclampsia and other dangerous conditions. The Institute of Pediatrics (IPOG) in Kyiv has spent 14 years studying the impact of radiation exposure on the immune systems of liquidators' children and children living in contaminated regions. They found a severe depletion of immunoglobulin-A, and depression of the entire system of T-helpers and T-suppressors that play a critical role in defending the human body against toxins, bacteria and carcinogenic agents.

The latency period for many forms of cancer begins to exact its toll after 20 years, and the half-life of radioactive cesium and strontium is 30 years, so we may witness the greatest surge in cancers in the next decade. In any case, it is very premature to close the book on Chornobyl's consequences at this stage.

A study commissioned by the U.S. Office of Naval Research found that Ukrainian children in the Zhytomyr and Rivne oblasts had twice the rate of acute lymphoblastic leukemia as children in areas that were spared Chornobyl's fallout. A Harvard Medical School study found that children in Greece who were in utero at the time of the Chornobyl accident had twice the risk of developing leukemia as control groups.

There is also growing concern about the prevalence of cardio-vascular disease among children born to liquidators and children living on contaminated territories. Ivan Kirimov, the mayor of the town of Ivankovo, just south of the Chornobyl exclusion zone, has been pleading for health officials to provide more screenings for children in his district. Preliminary surveys have shown that up to 75 percent of children in some villages suffer from high blood pressure.

Doctors at the Amosov Cardiac Surgery Institute in Kyiv and the main cardiac center in Miensk have reported abnormally high rates of cardiomyopathy, mitral valve prolapse and Epstein's Syndrome. Some of these cases were featured in the Oscar-winning documentary film "Chernobyl Heart."

Follow-up studies are clearly needed to verify the degree to which these illnesses and birth defects are related to radiation exposure, as opposed to other environmental factors. The Chornobyl disaster still offers unique opportunities to learn much more about the effects of radiation exposure. But the international research community has shown a curious lack of curiosity in addressing or financing these research programs.

Instead of following Christ's adage: "Seek and ye shall find," many research institutes seem to be following a policy of "Seek not, find not," or "Seek not, lest ye regret your findings." Even when presented with an opportunity to verify their much-touted theory of "radiophobia" and "hysteria" as the catch-all excuse for any reports of ill health effects, the IAEA declined. (Dr. Simeon Gluzman of Kyiv and Dr. Evelyn Bromet of the State University of New York at Stony Brook are two of the foremost experts on post-traumatic stress in communities recovering from disaster. Recently they offered to conduct a broad-based study of the psychological health of Chornobyl survivors and their children. If the IAEA were interested in a clinical diagnosis of such a syndrome as "radiophobia," as opposed to a layman's stereotype or slur, this was their agency's chance.)

These are just a few of the issues that will be discussed and debated at the April 24-25 conferences in Kyiv. The outcome could have a very long-term impact on energy policy and public health for many years to come.

Alexander B. Kuzma is executive director of the Children of Chornobyl Relief and Development Fund. He is currently based in Kyiv.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, April 23, 2006, No. 17, Vol. LXXIV

| Home Page |