International conference in Kyiv reviews Chornobyl's consequences (05/07/06)

International conference in Kyiv reviews Chornobyl's consequences

by Zenon Zawada
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - "Beauty is truth, truth beauty."

With these words penned by Irish poet John Keats, First Lady of Ukraine Kateryna Yushchenko began her April 24 remarks at the international conference on Chornobyl organized by the Ukrainian government.

As much as the truth about the catastrophe's effects on human health is sought, the conference proved that finding it will demand a struggle, as it will be contested for decades to come, if not remain elusive altogether.

"Twenty years after the largest man-made disaster in the history of mankind, we Ukrainians don't know enough, and we haven't properly grasped the reasons, scope and consequences of this event," President Viktor Yushchenko himself acknowledged at the April 24 opening.

Depending on one's view, a window into the truth either creaked opened or slammed shut when the United Nations - affiliated Chernobyl Forum issued its now famous report, "Chernobyl's Legacy: Health, Environmental and Socio-Economic Impacts."

At the April 24 ceremony, Mikhail Balonov of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reviewed the forum's carefully phrased conclusions, which were initially announced in September 2005:

"... among the 600,000 persons receiving more significant exposures (liquidators working in 1986-1987, evacuees and residents of the most 'contaminated' areas), the possible increase in cancer mortality due to this radiation exposure might be up to a few percent."

"This might eventually represent up to 4,000 fatal cancers in addition to the approximately 100,000 fatal cancers to be expected due to all other causes in this population."

This conclusion sharply contrasts with those made by a coalition of scientists and medical experts commissioned by European parliamentary groups and Greenpeace International, who released estimates in time for the 20th commemoration of the April 26 catastrophe.

The Greenpeace report estimated at least 30,000 more deaths related to Chornobyl, perhaps reaching as many as 100,000. The Ukrainian government has reached even more somber conclusions.

"At least 500,000 people, perhaps more, have already died out of the 2 million people who were officially classed as victims of Chornobyl in Ukraine," said Nikolai Omelianets, deputy head of the National Commission for Radiation Protection in Ukraine.

Of those, about 34,500 liquidators who took part in cleaning up Chornobyl have died, a rate three times as high as in the rest of the population, Mr. Omelianets said.

The Chernobyl Forum, consisting of eight United Nations organizations (including the IAEA) and representatives of the Russian Federation, Ukraine and Belarus, wrote its report by analyzing "all appropriate scientific information."

Such information included scientific studies undertaken by the IAEA, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Scientific Commission on the Effects of Atomic Radiation.

However, the forum report doesn't mention how many studies or which studies it chose to examine.

The report also stated "it is impossible to assess reliably, with any precision, numbers of fatal cancers caused by radiation exposure due to the Chornobyl accident. Further, radiation-induced cancers are at present indistinguishable from those due to other cancers."

As for ailments aside from cancer, the report states that because of the relatively low doses of radiation in the Chornobyl-affected regions, "there is no evidence or any likelihood of observing decreased fertility among males or females."

As surprising as the report's conclusions were, few of the speakers attending the Kyiv conference's opening ceremony questioned its validity.

President and Mrs. Yushchenko didn't issue any opinion on the forum report, and neither did U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine John Herbst, who told The Weekly that he didn't know enough about it.

Only Zenon Matkiwsky, president of the Children of Chornobyl Relief and Development Fund, injected debate into an otherwise placid opening ceremony, devoting his entire 15-minute speech to challenging the forum's conclusions.

Dr. Matkiwsky pointed to scientific studies that demonstrate increases in birth defects and rare cancers in those geographic regions most severely contaminated by Chornobyl's radiation, such as the Volyn, Rivne, Zhytomyr, Kyiv and Chernihiv Oblasts, as well as Belarus.

The Chernobyl Forum report didn't take these studies into account, he said.

For example, 75 percent of the children living in the village of Ivankovo in northern Kyiv Oblast suffer from high blood pressure.

The incidence of acute lymphoblastic leukemia in the children of Zhytomyr and Rivne are significantly higher than national averages in Ukraine, Dr. Matkiwsky said.

Centers in the Volyn and Rivne oblasts that have tracked the genetic health of 104,000 newborns over the past four years have documented birth defects in living and stillborn infants that should occur in much smaller numbers, even in larger populations, he said.

Nuclear radiation undeniably causes extra fingers or toes, deformed limbs and missing or deformed organs, he said.

"We invite the World Health Organization and the IAEA, the journalists and the government health officials present in this theater to visit the God-forsaken orphanages crammed with children with severe disfigurements, in villages like Znamianka, Vorzel, Tsiuropinsk and Zaluchia, and to see for themselves the situation we are trying to address," Dr. Matkiwsky said.

Perhaps the most disturbing, he said, is the spike in spina bifida cases, which have increased to levels four times higher than normal and nine times higher for the districts of northern Rivne Oblast that were most heavily contaminated by radioactive fallout.

Spin bifida is a birth defect in which the infant's spinal canal is exposed outside the skin, or is severed.

A joint Israeli-Ukrainian study found that children born to Chornobyl liquidators suffer from chromosomal aberrations at a rate seven times higher than their siblings born prior to 1986, he said.

"There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that chromosome damage will have a significant impact on genetic health as well as cancer incidence," Dr. Matkiwsky said.

The only available peer-reviewed studies in Belarus and Ukraine have clearly shown that women living in radiation-contaminated territories have a much higher rate of pregnancy complications, stillbirths and birth defects than women living in non-contaminated regions, he said.

"How can the WHO and the IAEA say with any confidence that there has been no impact on the immune system of children when blood samples taken from Chornobyl children show a much lower count of killer T cells as opposed to control populations?" he said.

In fact, the forum report acknowledges a steady increase in congenital malformations in both contaminated and uncontaminated regions of Belarus. However, "this does not appear to be radiation-related and may be the result of increased registration," the report states.

Dr. Matkiwsky criticized the fact that Dr. Fred Mettler was appointed co-author and spokesman for the Chernobyl Forum report.

In 1992 it was Dr. Mettler who told the U.S. Congress that the IAEA had conducted the most comprehensive investigation possible on Chornobyl survivors and the agency found no noticeable increase in thyroid cancer in children.

Dr. Mettler assured Sen. Joseph Lieberman that no increase in thyroid cancer would be noticeable for another 15 years after Chornobyl.

Five weeks later, the WHO and the British scientific journal Nature validated the reports of Belarusian scientists showing an 80-fold increase in thyroid cancer in children living in radiation-contaminated villages in Belarus.

Not every American of Ukrainian descent agrees with Dr. Matkiwsky's view.

Mary Mycio, the author of "Wormwood Forest," a book about the Chornobyl zone's natural history, said the Chernobyl Forum's report is right on target because it objectively examines the data currently available. "It's a good report that summarizes everything that is known, but not everything is known and may never be," she said.

The problem is that cancer, and even birth defects, can be attributed to a host of other factors, including genetics, the environment and behavior such as smoking, Ms. Mycio said. "People in Ukraine don't take care of their health, and often they blame it on Chornobyl," Ms. Mycio added.

As for birth defects, she points out that none were detected among the Hiroshima and Nagasaki populations which suffered nuclear attacks.

While Dr. Matkiwsky might have been the only leader to criticize the Chernobyl Forum report at the ceremony, his concerns were echoed in the Verkhovna Rada two days later.

Outgoing Rada Chairman Volodymyr Lytvyn took an unusually bold stand in challenging the forum report at a special parliamentary hearing on April 26. He called upon the Rada, along with the scientific and medical communities, to respond to the "unacceptable speculation of experts" which offended Ukrainians.

The Rada's Committee on Health Protection, Motherhood and Children, along with scientific and medical experts, must create a document that provides scientifically proven facts about the negative health effects of the Chornobyl disaster on the Ukrainian people, Mr. Lytvyn said. This document should be presented as Ukraine's official position for examination by various international institutions.

While scientists in Ukraine "shed tears over Chornobyl's medical effects, those in Vienna and Geneva are practically contradicting them," Mr. Lytvyn said.

The Ukrainian government has been playing bureaucratic games with Chornobyl, during which enormous sums of money assigned to mitigating its effects have obscurely disappeared, Mr. Lytvyn said.

He supported the proposition from Chornobyl veteran's organizations to create a single, authoritative executive organ to deal with the catastrophe's effects.

The Chernobyl Forum's prediction of up to 4,000 fatal cancer deaths is based on the experiences of other populations exposed to radiation that have been studied for many decades, such as the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. However, it doesn't explain more specifically how it obtained this result.

Initial Soviet estimates predicted 9,500 cancer deaths related to Chornobyl in the European parts of the former Soviet Union alone, using formulas based on radiation dose exposure.

A 1987 study sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy predicted a minimum 7,000 to 19,500 cancer deaths related to Chornobyl in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine.

In his presentation to the Rebirth, Renewal and Human Development Forum in Kyiv on April 25, Dr. Wolodymyr Wertelecki of the University of South Alabama in Mobile pointed out that the Chernobyl Forum report includes only six lines about the effect of the disaster on human reproduction.

Dr. Wertelecki, who led the studies revealing increases in spina bifida rates, as well as rare cases of conjoined twins in the Rivne Oblast, said the report's wording is very carefully crafted. It refers to congenital malformations instead of birth defects, which excludes a whole wide range of health problems, Dr. Wertelecki said.

Congenital malformations are physical deformities that don't include DNA damage, abnormal cell growth and chromosome abnormalities - all of which are birth defects.

The Chernobyl Forum's raw data and original materials are difficult to access, and the reader is left to rely on vague summary statements, Dr. Wertelecki said, adding that he neither accepts nor rejects its conclusions.

The report refers to people who have recovered from thyroid cancer, but it's impossible to reproduce without a thyroid, he said.

"The word-crafting, to me, is not done by scientists," Dr. Wertelecki said. "It sounds almost as if is done by masters of communication."

Chronic, low-dose radiation pollution such as Chornobyl demands further study, and the forum report is "woefully incomplete," he said.

An equal amount of effort is necessary to study birth defects.

"They refer to a study in Belarus, which implies there's only one study," he said. "You cannot criticize a single study and then call it a consensus. A consensus based on one study sounds strange to me."

The IAEA has intentionally suppressed or ignored many studies because they threaten the image of nuclear energy, Dr. Matkiwsky told The Weekly in an interview a week later.

As a result, the IAEA has emerged as a modern-day Walter Duranty, he said, referring to The New York Times reporter who won a Pulitzer Prize for covering up Ukraine's Famine-Genocide created by Joseph Stalin.

"One way or another, the truth will come out about Chornobyl," Dr. Matkiwsky said in his opening ceremony speech. "It may take another 20, or even 50 years. We can only hope that Chornobyl's impact will be less severe than we expected. But we have a duty to seek the truth."

| Home Page |