New Greenpeace Report on Chernobyl
In April 2006, on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl accident, Greenpeace issued the report The Chernobyl Catastrophe: Consequences on Human Health. According to Greenpeace, the report involved 52 respected scientists and includes information never before published in English. It challenges the International Atomic Energy Agency Chernobyl Forum report, which predicted 4,000 additional deaths attributable to the accident as a gross simplification of the real breadth of human suffering.
The new data, based on Belarus national cancer statistics, predicts approximately 270,000 cancers and 93,000 fatal cancer cases caused by Chernobyl. The report also concludes that on the basis of demographic data, during the last 15 years, 60,000 people have additionally died in Russia because of the Chernobyl accident, and estimates of the total death toll for the Ukraine and Belarus could reach another 140,000.
The report also looks into the ongoing health impacts of Chernobyl and concludes that radiation from the disaster has had a devastating effect on survivors; damaging immune and endocrine systems, leading to accelerated ageing, cardiovascular and blood illnesses, psychological illnesses, chromosomal aberrations and an increase in foetal deformations.
In another part of their website, Greenpeace introduces with photos and texts a few victims of the Chernobyl catastrophy under the title of Who is affected. One of them is “Annya was born in 1990 in Zakopytye, a village highly contaminated by the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown of 1986. A cancerous brain tumour at the age of four marked the end of Annya's childhood and the beginning of a life of pain and illness.”
See www.greenpeace.org/international/campaigns/nuclear/nomorechernobyls/who-is-affected.
