Chernobyl Disaster: A Perspective

The Chernobyl accident’s severe radiation effects killed 28 of the site’s 600 workers in the first four months after the event. Another 106 workers received high enough doses to cause acute radiation sickness. Two workers died within hours of the reactor explosion from non-radiological causes. Another 200,000 cleanup workers in 1986 and 1987 received doses of between 1 and 100 rem (The average annual radiation dose for a U.S. citizen is about .6 rem). Chernobyl cleanup activities eventually required about 600,000 workers, although only a small fraction of these workers were exposed to elevated levels of radiation. Government agencies continue to monitor cleanup and recovery workers’ health. (UNSCEAR 2008, pg. 47, 58, 107, and 119) The Chernobyl accident contaminated wide areas of Belarus, the Russian Federation, and Ukraine inhabited by millions of residents. Agencies such as the World Health Organization have been concerned about radiation exposure to people evacuated from these areas. The majority of the five million residents living in contaminated areas, however, received very small radiation doses comparable to natural background levels (0.1 rem per year). (UNSCEAR 2008, pg. 124-25) Today the available evidence does not strongly connect the accident to radiation-induced increases of leukemia or solid cancer, other than thyroid cancer. Many children and adolescents in the area in 1986 drank milk contaminated with radioactive iodine, which delivered substantial doses to their thyroid glands. To date, about 6,000 thyroid cancer cases have been detected among these children. Ninety-nine percent of these children were successfully treated; 15 children and adolescents in the three countries died from thyroid cancer by 2005. The available evidence does not show any effect on the number of adverse pregnancy outcomes, delivery complications, stillbirths or overall health of children among the families living in the most contaminated areas. (UNSCEAR 2008, pg. 65) Experts conclude some cancer deaths may eventually be attributed to Chernobyl over the lifetime of the emergency workers, evacuees and residents living in the most contaminated areas. These health effects are far lower than initial speculations of tens of thousands of radiation-related deaths.