Chernobyl Nuclear Accident Congressional Hearings Transcript

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Third Administration. This organization reportedly had medical information about
500,000 persons involved in the region and the clean-up process.
3. The sample was too small, including only 100,000 persons stUl resident in the
region, and not those who left to return to Estonia, Latvia (5,000), Central A.sia, especially
Uzbekistan (12,000) or elsewhere within the former USSR—and therefore
whose morbidity and mortality (either short-run or now longer-run) were not incorporated
in the sample. The total number of persons involved should have been
660,000. According to the Baits, many of these individuals, especially young military
reservists called up explicitly to help in the clean-up, became very ill or died.
4. Testimony to the IAEA investigators was provided and ignored. On the one
hand, I can accept with alacrity that there are many diagnostic errors in Soviet
medicine (then and now), and I have written (with Alfred Friendly, Jr.) a major
book on health and environmental issues (entitled Ecocide in the USSR: Health and
Nature Under Siege, New York, Basic Books, 1992, 376 pp.) explicitly detailing all
the problems of Soviet medicine. On the other hand, to completely ignore some of
the evidence is a bit much. One physician from Zhitomir oblast showed me his data
(which he twice presented to the IAEA investigators), on the growth of congenital
anomalies from the period 1985 to 1989. For every subadministrative territory of the
oblast, he had rayon data for every single birth in the oblast, and their medical
status. Be found a growth of 2.5 to 7 times for all types of congenital anomalies
since the base year, 1985, the year before the accident. If one even reduces any putative
exaggeration, mis-diagnosis, by even 50 percent, the increase in anomalies in
this impacted region in such a short time is more than noteworthy. Why were these
data not incorporated? Others tell me that suggestions for specific areas to visit also
were ignored or unarranged?
5. Current data show an explosion of cases of thyroid cancer in the region. Some
selected data are, as follows:
a. In late March 1992, the Ukraine's Parliamentary Commission on Chernobyl affirmed
that 37 Ukrainian and Belorussian children were diagnosed with thyroid
cancer in 1991 and 1992. Prior to the accident, only 1 or 2 cases per year were reported;
b. In mid-AprU 1992, the Belarus Parliament was informed that 1,700 cases of thyroid
cancer were recorded in the republic /country at the beginning of 1992, with 35
children so afflicted. Prior to the accident, for the 20 years up to 1986, only 5 adults
and no children were diagnosed with thyroid cancer. Since the beginning of the
year, another 299 persons, were "officially recorded," including 52 children in the
first few months of 1992 (subsequent to the 1,700 count). Bow many were not unofficially
recorded, or incorrectly diagnosed? Incorrect diagnoses can work in both directions—undercounts
due to misdiagnosis and non-recognition, or exaggerated overstatements
of the seriousness of the given illness. The disparity pre- and postChernobyl
is enormous even were one to multiply the base period by 10 or 20 and halve
the later figure (say 200 and 850, respectively).
c. At the Belarus Congress on Chernobyl, held in April of 1992, a speaker indicated
that "almost 200,000 Belorussian children now have enlarged thyroids." Bow
many will progress into th3rroid cancer is not known, but certainly if one assumes as
little as 5 percent, this would be 10,000 additional cases;
d. In Ukraine, the rate of thyroid cancer has increased by 17 times in the period
1986 to 1991, from a rate of 0.13 cases per 100,000 population up to its present level,
or 2.2 per 100,000 population;
e. The Ukrainian Minister for Clean-up of Chernobyl stipulated in the spring of
this year that 6,000 to 8,000 excess deatli occurred due to the Chernobyl accident.
Again this is for Ukraine only and not for Belarus, Russia, Estonia, Latvia, and
other republics/ countries.
f. The Ukrainian Minister of Environment, Yuri Shcherbak, stated that "potential
mortal doses of radiation were suffered by 365,000 persons (for Ukraine only). By
this time, 7,000 persons who participated in the emergency work have died." Not 32
persons as initially admitted and not the 150 later admitted, according to official
statistics, but 7,000 as a minimum for excess deaths.
To repeat, even if most of these statements by local authorities are exaggerated,
even by doubling the true levels and rates, they are significantly more than Soviet
official or the L^A results.
To indicate that radiophobia is widespread (from the results of the latter's survey)
is not surprising. If it were not so, then I certainly would believe that this rejwrt
was erroneous for this reason alone. I was then in Belgium, serving as the first, experimental
Sovietologist-in-Residence in the Office of the Secretary-General of
NATO, Lord Carrington, at the exact time of the accident. My wife and I were exposed
to the radioactivity that impacted that country as well. I can fully empathize