Chernobyl Nuclear Accident Congressional Hearings Transcript

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the cancer registry data in general decided that cancer reporting in
all the republics that we looked at was substantially underreported
from what should have been there. The levels are substantially
below what was reported in Poland and Czechoslovakia, for example.
So much of the data is coming from a base that was unsatisfactory
in terms of not reporting what probably was there.
Now, is
there an increase? There could be, but the data doesn't
show a definite radiation increase, and the data doesn't exclude it,
either. So we came away saying that we didn't know whether there
was an increase in thyroid cancer or leukemia at this time but that
they were issues that we would be concerned about, certainly.
We tried to predict future health effects, and we do think there
probably will be an increase in cancers over the next 70 years. If
one takes a village of 10,000 people and looks at that and says,
what will the general cancer rate be? Well, cancer deaths, at least
in the U.S., are about 17 percent, so that would be 1,700 people. We
think that might go to 1,750. So 50 people in a village of 10,000
might in fact be expected to develop cancers. Of those, about six of
those deaths would probably be from leukemias.
We did find generally poor health in the Soviet Union and poor
medical care. We felt that 15 to 20 percent of the adults that we
saw should be under the care of a doctor at the time that we saw
them. They were sick. It was predominantly hypertension, alcoholism,
and other things. Their salt intake is about 12 grams a day
compared to two grams in the U.S. They don't have a choice. They
don't have refrigerators, so they're going to continue to eat salt
and they're going to continue to be hypertensive. On the other
hand, they have no access to medicines to treat the hypertension.
The needles that we used, the disposable needles, they were trying
to save and re-use because they didn't have needles, which, of
course, goes against all of our training. But certainly dental hygiene,
the need for antibiotics, all are significant issues in all of the
areas that we went.
We think there is a definite need for increased education, as has
been pointed by the previous speaker, bringing people to this country,
teaching them. We do not think it's a good idea to just give
them a high-tech piece of equipment, one, without the education;
two, without the reagents; and three, without being able to get
access to the spare parts.
Currently, there are efforts by the Department of Energy, the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the State Department, and the
National Cancer Institute. The National Cancer Institute I know is
working on protocols for studying thyroid cancer and leukemia. I
believe one of their major problems at this point is trying to figure
out who's in charge and to be able to deal with on a continuing
basis. Obviously, if one is spending millions on a project, in setting
it up and knowing the project is going to probably go for 20 or 30
years, one would like to have the same people running it from
either the Ukrainian or the Byelorussian side, and it's not easy to
figure that out at this point.
There is a lot of data available on acute radiation syndrome from
the accident, and I think at this point, as near as I can tell, the
Department of Energy is interested in following that.