A national cancer registry to assess trends after the Chernobyl accident

[struggle4progress]

Okeanov AE, Sosnovskaya EY, Priatkina OP.
A national cancer registry to assess trends after the Chernobyl accident.
Swiss Med Wkly 2004;134:645–649.
Original article
Peer reviewed article

The National Cancer Registry has been operational in the Republic of Belarus since 1973: information on all new cases of malignant tumours is registered. The data are kept in a computer database and used for assessing the oncological status of the population, and for epidemiological studies. We compared findings before the Chernobyl accident of April 26, 1986 (Chernobyl) and findings between 1990 and 2000. The overall comparison on the changes in the incidence of cancer morbidity in Belarus is presented. The increase is statistically significant for all regions, but significantly greater in the most chronically radiation-contaminated region ...

The paper presents a comparative analysis of the incidence of cancer morbidity in the population of two regions of Belarus, selected for the greatest difference in their radioactive contamination following Chernobyl. The highest contamination occurred in the Gomel region and is mainly due to high levels of radiocaesium (137Cs) in the soil and in the alimentary chain, especially in rural areas. A relatively low radioactive fallout was noticed in the Vitebsk region, considered here as the “control” area. We compare the situation before and after Chernobyl in the two regions. The overall cancer morbidity rate in all organs including colon, urinary bladder and thyroid, was significantly higher in the Gomel region than in Vitebsk.

In populations living in two areas with high 137Cs contamination (oblast of Gomel and Mogilev), the peak incidence rates of breast cancer were already reached between the ages of 45–49 years, 15 years earlier than in the Vitebsk region.

Belarussian “liquidators” who were mobilised to clean up the most contaminated territory and build the sarcophagus around the destroyed atomic plant, received the highest radiation doses. They had a significant excess of incidence of cancers of colon, urinary bladder, and thyroid gland, when compared with a corresponding adult population of the Vitebsk region.
The Relative Risk (RR) of lung cancer among “liquidators” in 1997–2000 significantly exceeded 1, while in the control population it remained stable.

Clinical Institute of Radiation Medicine and Endocrinology Research, Minsk, Belarus

http://www.smw.ch/set_current.html

[NNadir]

1. And now for the UN commission, real numbers, not percentages.

If 13 people die of a specific cancer and some effect increases that number to 260, is it reasonable to report that the increase has been 2000%. Apparently if you are mindless, it is.

The total mortality effects of Chernobyl have been exhaustively examined by the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation. The report is available on line and can be found here: http://www.unscear.org/pdffiles/annexj.pdf

We sometimes hear from scaremongers and spreaders of ignorance that the Thyroid Cancer rate in Belarus "increased by 100%." This is true as we can see in table 60 on page 546 of the report. Whereas a control group of the sample size (the exposed population of Belorussian) would have been expected to exhibit 107 cases of this largely curable cancer, we can see that 214 cases, an increase of exactly 100% occurred, there were 107 extra cases.

I note that in 1995, almost ten years after Chernobyl, 339 miners died in a Ukraine coal mining accident completely unremarked by moral dolts. On April 5, 63 Ukrainian workers were killed in an explosion in a coal mine pit, completely unmourned by those who exhibit cold and cynical indifference to human suffering.

http://www.moles.org/ProjectUnderground/drillbits/980407/98040708.html

In fact, on July 8, 2002, the Los Angeles Times reported that over 3,700 Ukrainian coal miners were killed in coal mining accidents since 1991 (5 years after Chernobyl), completely unreported by those struggling for a sliver of morality.

Thus, we see that if everyone who contracted Thyroid cancer actually died from it (which is not the case since it is treatable) that possibly as many as 3,500 people more died from coal than died from Chernobyl, and that's not even paying attention to the normal use of these energy cigarettes, the smoke, air pollutants and ash pollutants of this despicable form of energy.

It is unquestionable that Chernobyl was an unnecessary and avoidable disaster far outside the norm. However to a person who can think, present company excepted, it is very clear that i) no nuclear disaster anywhere on earth has anywhere near the environmental impact of the ordinary every day operations of fossil fuel plants. ii) That the likelihood of future accidents on this scale can be engineered to an even lower level.

If we simply shut energy systems if someone somewhere at some time were injured, there would be no energy systems. The best that thinking people can do is make realistic assessments of risk/benefit ratios. A person who can think can easily understand the best and most rational choices.

The problem is that irrational people with poor math skills are often allowed to define the debate.

And now I'd like to close with a photograph of Sergey Gashak who works with Dr. Robert Baker, the University of Texas geneticist who works in the Chernobyl exclusion zone. Here we see Dr. Gashak inspecting the contents of a bird's nest in the "nuclear desert."



Many more of Dr. Baker's photographs from inside the exclusion zone
can be found here:

http://www.nsrl.ttu.edu/chernobyl/pg1.htm

[struggle4progress]

2. Ya can't do much epidemiology looking at only raw totals and refusing ...

to compute any ratios. And, of course, I naturally suspect that the next time I ever dare to quote raw totals, you'll be happily sneering that I should have used percentages instead.

In any case, it is not at all clear how to reliably compare mortality for which a industrial cause seems immediately obvious to mortality for which an industrial cause is statistically inferred.

For the diffuse morbidity and mortality, which is estimated only by crude epidemiology, it is clear that poorly designed studies will underestimate effects, by mixing groups that should have remained separate. But there is another problem: in many cases, morbidity mechanisms cannot determined precisely enough to allocate a casuality to a cause; and in fact in many cases, a multiplicity of insults may all have contributed to the final outcome. Crudely speaking, the problem of allocating a cancer (to an immune problem or to radiation damage or to chemical exposure or etc) may impossible because the different steps in a multistep process may have distinct causes.

Nor is it clear to me exactly what events to count, even in the concrete case: people die by electrocution, regardless of the type of generator; people die traffic accidents going to or from the power plant, regardless of type; in the coal, hydro, and nuclear plants, people fall off ladders.

Meanwhile, electrocity is obviously providing some benefits that may improve health and prolong life, such as improved hygiene conditions.

So my reaction to your anecdotes about coal-mining accidents is not that there's no real issue but rather that the debate will be a sticky wicket the resolution of which would not only require hard tedious work --- and but would also likely be entirely irrelevant politically.


BTW, the Texas Tech system was (last I looked) separate from University of Texas system ( http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/statutes/ed.toc.htm ). People sometimes like their real home institution to get credit for their presence.