Measuring Chernobyl deaths

The WSJ's Numbers Guy on Chernobyl deaths (Measuring Chernobyl's Fallout):

How many people died because of the Chernobyl nuclear-reactor explosion, which spewed radiation across northern Europe? Twenty years after the accident, the death toll remains in dispute.

This month, the World Health Organization estimated "up to" 9,000 people died or will die of cancer because of the incident, which unfolded in the early morning hours of April 26, 1986. The number was 6,700 to 38,000 in a recent report published in a peer-reviewed journal, from the Lyon, France-based International Agency for Research on Cancer, an agency governed by the WHO and 16 member nations. Greenpeace International, which opposes nuclear power, published its own report, based partly on papers from former Soviet nations. Greenpeace estimates the death toll is between 93,000 and 200,000, including cancer deaths and other illnesses like immunity disorders.

As is his wont (Webster's Dictionary says this means "habitual way of doing"), the Numbers Guy dissects these differences.

Um, not surprisingly, Greenpeace's estimate is the most bogus:

Greenpeace, sparked by the September announcement, brought together more than 50 scientists -- mostly from Belarus, Ukraine and Russia, the most-affected nations -- to write a report compiling papers published in regional medical journals. Ivan Blokov, leader of Greenpeace's Chernobyl project and an editor of the report, told me that the report is "scientifically based," with no political statements.

However, the report relied heavily on some questionable methods. It assumed that Chernobyl was responsible for an overall increase in cancer rates, but Chernobyl's effect on those rates is difficult to isolate from other factors, such as changes in smoking rates and improvements in the diagnosis of cancer. Also, researchers wanted to estimate how many people exposed to Chernobyl radiation developed cancer other than thyroid cancer, which usually isn't fatal. To do so, they studied how cancer rates rose in post-war Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and looked at the ratio of thyroid cancers to other cancers in those cases. They applied a similar ratio for Chernobyl. But Japan's overall cancer rates differ from Europe's -- Japan has a higher rate of stomach cancer but a lower rate of lung cancer, for instance -- so it's not clear the same ratios would hold true.

Comments

[Scott Peterson]

As a college student, I did my senior thesis on the effects on the citizens of Utah from the fallout resulting from the extensive above ground nuclear weapons testing done in Nevada in the 50's and 60's.

I found that the consensus of scientists was that it is impossible to attribute a specific case of cancer or cancer death directly to the fallout. A general increase in the rate of cancer deaths among residents of southern Utah was found, but the research was unable to categorically state that the increase in cancer deaths was attributable to the nuclear testing.

The result was that Congress passed a law creating a compensation fund to pay specific amounts of cash to individuals who could prove that they had lived in affected areas at the time of the tests and that they had contracted specific types of cancers. This was done due to pressure from Utah legislators rather than from scientific certitude that applicants' cancer was caused by fallout.

Common sense obviously would indicate that this was the right thing to do. My point is that it is very difficult to come up with a meaningful estimate of deaths in this type of scenario.

[roger]

Isn't it funny, those poor bogus Greenpeace people. Who, of course, have had an office dealing with cancer deaths in Kiev since 1990. Surely they have no information. While the IAEA, famously, decided that the numbers presented by the Gorbachev government were precisely right in 1990. We know how open and aboveboard the Soviets were. And the IAEA has resisted any notion that persistent, low intensity radiation could have any bad health effect whatsoever. They have also underestimated the amount of radiation put out by Chernobyl -- in fact, they perform the difficult act of making fifty tons of material simply disappear.

In fact, as you either well know (or your ignorance is such as to disqualify you from the discussion) the IAEA is the outlier here, and always has been. Richard Garwin, the IBM, pro-nuke scientist, in his review of the IAEA report called it deliberately misleading. Read Flynn's review in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

But of course -- deliberately misleading is what the pro-nuke side is all about.

The medium range of figures is surely between 23 thousand and 100,000. The only way the IAEA could make its figures work is by redoing the scientific consensus on the danger of radiation over the last forty years.

And we are simply talking about stats about deaths, here, not about the numerous, ramifying collateral injuries -- economic, social, environmental, and health -- caused by Chernobyl. Basically, it has sunk the economies of the Ukraine and Belarus for twenty years.

What a great source of energy that nuclear is, man! Got to get us some. And the accidents can always be officially swept under the rug.

[Dano]

This was done due to pressure from Utah legislators rather than from scientific certitude that applicants' cancer was caused by fallout.

sigh...

Science isn't about _certitude_ . Science is about likelihoods. Science doesn't categorically state anything.

I don't know what kind of college you went to, but I suspect that you had a lot of red marks on your senior project from the professor, chastising you for your misunderstanding of science. I don't think you took their remarks to heart.

Best,

D

[John Whitehead]

IAEA? I don't see that mentioned in the article. The numbers guy focuses on the WHO numbers.

[joshua corning]

I hate greeenpeace, they are knee jerk extremests who advocate policies that kill people by the hundreds of thousands every year...not much else to say other then the chernobyl incident is not an example of the dangers of nuclear power, it is an example of the dangers of centralized command and control government....same with the Utah tests.

[Dano]

If there are readers out there who actually read joshua's comments,

The tiresome Greenpeace lie still is circulating around in dark, undereducated Cheeto-stained corners of the Internets, and is perhaps best debunked here, and here, and perhaps here too.

Best,

D