Chernobyl Nuclear Accident Congressional Hearings Transcript

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experienced radiation doses to the thyroid of more than 2000 roentgen
equivalents, which means they received at least twice the maximum
recommended dose for nuclear industr\' workers for an entire year.
to 4,000 of these children had doses as high as 2,000 roentgen
equivalents. Because iodine collects in the thyroid gland, these
children have developed chronic inflammation of the thyroid often
giving rise to thyroid cancer. It has been estimated that within five
tears of the disaster the number of thyroid cancer had grown from 5 to
22 ? year, and from 1986 to the end of 1995, 589 cases of thyroid
cancer were recorded in children and adolescents. Ukraine's overall
rate of thyroid cancer among children has increased about 10-fold from
pre-accident levels and is now more than four cases per million.
On another subject, a group of Kyiv researchers has conducted a
medical survey of a group of liquidators and has found that the
majority of these people had the constant fatigue syndrome
accompanied by depression of a certain subclass of lymphocytes, the so
called natural killer cells which have the power to kill the cells of
tumors or virus Infected cells. The defects of natural immune system
Up
got the name of "Chornobyl AIDS" which in
the nearest future could
cause the increased rate of leukemias and malignant tumors, as well as
makes a person more susceptible to "normal infections" like bronchitis,
tonsillitis, pneumonia etc. which last longer and acquire grave clinical
forms.