(May 26, 2000) The United Nations recently published a report on the consequences of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. A disaster that hasn't come to an end yet.
(530.5170) WISE Amsterdam - It has now been 14 years since the disaster in Chernobyl, and yet the worst may still come. A new report, Chernobyl - a continuing catastrophe, by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), outlines the current state of affairs in the region affected by the most horrible nuclear disaster ever (see WISE News Communique 529.5163: "Chernobyl 14 years: never-ending story", where we shortly referred to the report). Most people think of the nuclear accident as an event that has been consigned to history, but the truth is that the accident continues to have a devastating impact on the populations of the three most affected countries. While the explosive stories of the meltdown and clouds of radiation have long since faded from the headlines, the real human, economic, social, health and environmental catastrophe has only just begun. The compilers of the report give an overview of the situation in the most affected countries: Belarus, Ukraine and the Russian Federation.
Approximately 70% of the radioactive fallout descended on Belarus, making it the worst contaminated of all the affected countries. Twenty percent of its forests are still contaminated and cultivation of 6,000 square kilometers of agricultural land has been ruled out by law. Nine percent of all government expenditure is channelled into mitigation of the direct consequences of the Chernobyl disaster and 109,000 people have been resettled.
In the Ukraine, nearly 3.5 million people, including 1.5 million children were directly affected by the accident. Nearly 73,000 Ukrainians are now permanent invalids as a result of the Chernobyl accident, and 91,200 people had to be resettled from the 30 km exclusion zone encircling the site of the accident. More than 50,000 square kilometers of Ukraine have been contaminated. As a result of the economic crisis, the Ukrainian government manages to make available only a part of the money originally planned for Chernobyl relief.
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On April 26, Valeriy Shevchuk, deputy chairman of the "Committee on Problems of Consequences of Disaster on Chernobyl NPP of the Belarussian Ministry of Emergency Situations" (EMERCOM), remembered the disaster. According to him, if any determined steps will be undertaken, "we'll lose these districts", and only disabled population will be there, and their maintenance needs huge costs. In the UN report, EMERCOM stated that 80% of the population of Belarus has health problems ranging from vitamin deficiency to thyroid cancer. In Minsk, the representative of EMERCOM said: "In fact, none of the systems of the organism of the inhabitants of contaminated areas function normally." Shevchuk also said that according to the law on social protection of the population, more than 500,000 inhabitants of the contaminated areas, and among them more than 300,000 children, must get social help. Financial aid to the population of these districts decreases every year. So, if in 1991 Chernobyl costs of the country made up 22.3% of state budget funds, in 2000 it's planned to allocate only 6.6%. Valeriy Shevchuk thinks that this year, in reality not more than 3.5% will be allocated compared to 1999. Accumulator of News, 3 May 2000 |
In the Russian Federation, an area of 57,000 square kilometers was contaminated, home to 2.7 million people. A total of 200,000 Russians participated in the emergency cleanup operation, of whom 46,000 are now invalids as a result. About 1.8 million people, including 300,000 children, continue to live on contaminated land, while 50,000 have been resettled from the most dangerous areas. Apart from the "liquidators", 570,000 people are registered as affected. Similar to Ukraine, the government is only able to provide a portion of the required relief funds.
Millions of people still live in areas with high levels of contamination. Resettlement on this scale is a massive operation that continues to be a tremendous economic burden. Apart from the obvious cost of emergency relief and relocation, the accident has also taken a massive toll on the region's ability to create wealth. Particularly in Ukraine, the region which once provided food for people throughout the Soviet Union, it is now reduced to importing everything.
People in the region have very little faith in public information. They don't trust radiation safety labels on food products; they don't trust any home produce; they don't trust the authorities. Limited knowledge of the long-term effects of exposure to radiation, along with a general distrust of public information and the inevitable rumors of hideous ailments and genetic mutants, have induced psychological trauma and prolonged panic in the hearts and minds of millions of people.
So far, the biggest visible threat to health has been thyroid cancer. During the accident, there were large emissions of radioactive iodine-131, which affects the thyroid gland and can lead to thyroid cancer as well as other thyroid disorders. Iodine-131 has a short half-life and so decays quickly, ceasing to contaminate the region. However, it takes time for thyroid cancer to develop, and the people most vulnerable are those who were young children or babies unborn at the time of the accident.
The number of people with thyroid cancer began to increase about five years after the accident. This number continues to rise. In some areas the incidence is over a hundred times higher than before the accident. Scientists originally predicted that the incidence would not peak until 2006, and it was expected that the figure would eventually reach 6,600, but recently the number of cases has exceeded expectations. Over 11,000 cases of thyroid cancer have already been reported.
The World Health Organization's International Thyroid Project has found evidence suggesting that even relatively low levels of radiation exposure may result in underactive thyroid syndrome, also known as hypothyrodism. Hypothyroidism can have the following effects: in new-born babies, severe mental and growth retardation; in children it can cause dwarfism; and in adults it can cause lethargy, cold intolerance, weight gain, swelling hands and feet, increased menstrual flow, infertility and depressed heart function.
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The UN report also points out: "One major cause for concern is the risk of forest fires, which would send clouds of smoke carrying radioactive material into the atmosphere, leaving us again at the mercy of the winds." In May, new fires broke out in the area. The impact of these forest fires have been consequently downplayed by the Ukrainian and Belarussian governments. Reuters News Service reported on May 15: "Ukraine says no threat from fires near Chernobyl", and on May 16: "Belarus says no radiation threat from bog fires." A duty officer at Belarus' civil defense headquarters said: "Because of the dryness and high winds, the fire has spread over a large area." He added that about 1,000 firefighters were battling flames on about 1,400 hectares of peat bog. He said areas near the border with Ukraine, poisoned by the fire and explosion at Chernobyl, were burning in three places. But he said readings showed no increased radiation in the sparsely populated area and that there were no fires inside the 30 km exclusion zone around the plant. The US will send a team of experts to check if fires raging near Chernobyl have increased radiation levels in Belarus. Reuters, 15, 16 and 19 May 2000 |
Statistics show that, so far, thyroid cancer is the primary form of cancer which can be directly linked with Chernobyl, but most other cancers would not start to show up for at least 10 years after the accident, and might well take 15-20 years to materialize. When other types of cancer do materialize, it will be difficult to prove that they are caused by radiation exposure, because medical science is not yet able to differentiate between cancers resulting from exposure to radiation and cancers resulting from other causes.
Recent studies have shown that some people, who were children at the time of the disaster, have developed rogue antibodies which fail to recognize the body's own tissue and attack it as though it were a foreign infection. Evidence is also coming to light suggesting that lung, heart and kidney problems can also be traced to radiation released from Chernobyl.
There is some controversy about the findings of the various research projects addressing the environmental and health effects of Chernobyl, but one thing that emerges crystal clear is the importance of continuing medical research. There are several reasons why this research is vital for the people living in the affected areas. Firstly, better understanding of the health effects of radiation exposure is essential for accurate diagnosis and appropriate treatment. Secondly, and perhaps equally important, the better the understanding of the health effects, the easier it is to provide convincing reassurance to the residents of the affected area, whose health has suffered enormously from the psychological effects of living with contamination.
A total area of 155,000 square kilometers is still contaminated with the dangerous radioactive isotopes caesium-137 and strontium-90, which have long radioactive half-lives and will continue to threaten the environment throughout most of the next century. The affected area consist of forests and prime agricultural land. In Ukraine alone, more than a million hectares of forest are contaminated. The forests and farmland together consituted the livelihood of the people. They are now effectively barren. As well as cultivated crops, wild food sources are also contaminated--berries, mushrooms, fish and game are all a threat to life. As radionuclides slowly penetrate the soil they filter down into the water-table and poison rivers and lakes. The threat of radioactive pollution looms over the Dnieper River in Ukraine, which is the water supply for several million people.
Rightly, the authors of Chernobyl - a continuing catastrophe point out in their concluding remarks to the lack of interest from the international community to support humanitarian projects within the affected areas: "The EBRD expects to complete the refurbishment of the Chernobyl plant site by 2007. A sum of US$400 million has already been pledged for this operation." "A contribution from donor countries of just 3% of this amount would have a substantial impact on the alleviation of human suffering that has resulted from the accident."
Since the people affected by the Chernobyl disaster live in three different countries, and the consequences of the disaster are so varied that they fall within the remits of a great many different governmental and non-governmental organizations, the distribution and implementation of aid involves a large network of different agencies. For this reason, the United Nations Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and the Head of the UN OCHA is acting as United Nations Coordinator of International Cooperation, and his Geneva office serves as a channel for donor contributions. A "Chernobyl Trust Fund" has been created for the express purpose of receiving and administering these funds. This mandate was assigned to OCHA by a series of General Assembly resolutions concerning the International Cooperation on Chernobyl, adopted between 1990 and 1999. OCHA has set up Chernobyl Core Groups in Moscow, Minsk and Kiev to coordinate aid and distribution, social and psychological rehabilitation community centers and training schemes.
OCHA also convenes and coordinates work of the Inter-Agency Task Force on Chernobyl and the Quadripartite Coordination Committee at Ministerial Level for International Cooperation on Chernobyl, and provides secretarial support to both mechanisms.
Source: Chernobyl - a continuing catastrophe, United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), March 2000
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