EXPLODING THE MYTH OF CHERNOBYL

Piers Paul Read interviewed the survivors

of the nuclear disaster seven years on and discovered that the western press were duped

Power-station. The Swedes decided to phase out nuclear power by the Year 2010.

However, it was precisely because of the earlier accidents like that at Mayak, and the contamination of territory around the weapons-testing grounds in Kazakhstan, that the scientists at the Institute of Bio- Physics in Moscow, who advised the Soviet government at the time of Chernobyl, probably knew more about the effects of radiation on human health than their west- ern equivalents.

On 2 May, immediately after the May Day holiday, the Soviet Prime Minister, Nikolai Ryzhkov, went to Chernobyl and the juggernaut of the highly centralised state finally went into action. The 10-kilo- metre exclusion zone was extended to 30 kilometres. Because of the danger of cae- sium and strontium entering the food chain, other areas were either evacuated or became 'zones of strict control' where `clean' food was shipped in. Two thousand medical teams were set up, and by the end of 1986 696,000 people had been examined, 215,000 of them children. Of these, 37,500 were sent to hospital for further investiga- tion.

Few of these suffered from radiation sickness. This condition affects those who receive a dose of over 100 rems (roentgen equivalent man). The rem as a unit for measuring radiation has now been super- seded by the sievert; however, it was the rem that was used at the time of Cher- nobyl, and the exposure of the victims can be compared to the average annual person- al dose received in Britain from cosmic radiation, background radiation, medical treatment, etc. of around .25 rem.

After the accident at Chernobyl, between 200 and 300 men and women, principally power-station workers, firemen and mem- bers of the militia, were treated for radia- tion sickness in hospitals in Moscow and Kiev. The official figure for fatalities as a direct consequence of the accident was 31. It has been treated with scepticism but is probably accurate: and even among these some died as a result of falling masonry or straightforward burns.

Among the others I interviewed were General Pikalov, the commander of the Chemical Troops (estimated dose, 87 rems) and General Berdov, commander of the militia (estimated dose, 60 rems): both told me they had suffered no lasting ill effects as a result of their exposure to radiation. General lvanov, the jovial deputy comman- der of the Soviet Civil Defence (estimated dose, 60 rems), thought that a small dose of radiation might be actually beneficial. He also espoused the common belief that the best antidote to radiation was vodka. Vladimir Chugunov, a senior engineer, was grievously ill after the accident: his hair fell out, he had atrocious burns on his legs, his weight fell to 88 lbs. He not only recovered but insisted upon returning to work at Chernobyl.

The Ukrainian scientist, Vladimir Chernousenko, who was one of the scientif- ic advisers to the government commission after the accident and later contracted can- cer, made headlines in the West by saying that several thousand of those who had worked at containing the consequences of the accident in the 30-kilometre zone the so-called liquidators — had already died from diseases caused by radiation.

The retort that the death-rate would be the same for any equivalent group in the Soviet Union was impossible to prove because there were no adequate records. However, I found that Chernousenko's claims were treated with some scepticism by those who had worked at Chernobyl. Numerous power-station workers, like the chief engineer Nikolai Steinberg (now the minister responsible for nuclear safety in the Ukraine), received far larger doses than either the liquidators or the general population, yet continued to work at the power-station and remain in good health.

How, then, has it become accepted that Chernobyl has been responsible for thou- sands of deaths? The answer lies in the link between radiation and cancer. As with smoking, the dangers are statistical rather than certain, but since Chernobyl affected a large number of people theoretical esti- mates of final fatalities are high. Our National Radiological Protection Board has predicted around 30,000 cancers over the next 40 years in the affected parts of Russia and Western Europe, an 0.1 per cent addition to those anticipated in the same population over the same period of time.

Such an increase, however, is hypotheti- cal. The margin of error in any survey is greater than the estimated increase, and so is not epidemiologically detectable against the high background rate for cancer, including radiation-induced cancer caused by radon gas, sunshine, X-rays, as well as cancer caused by the strong untipped cigarettes that almost everyone smokes in Russia. It is therefore impossible to say with certainty that any one case of cancer was caused by the accident at Chernobyl.

However, the risk of cancer — particu- larly leukaemia — was seized upon by the democratic forces in the former Soviet Union as a stick with which to beat their Communist foes. For example, the Soviet authorities were accused of genocide for allowing the May Day parade to proceed in Kiev despite the accident at Chernobyl. In fact, the level of radiation in Kiev was well within internationally accepted interven- tion norms and, because of rainfall over Bavaria, was no worse than in Munich. As the British nuclear expert Thomas Mar- sham said at the time, 'If you were to sud- denly say everyone should get out of Kiev, you'd probably have two hundred people killed on the roads.'

The irony of the Chernobyl disaster is that quite possibly the nationalists, environ- mentalists and democrats did more harm than good to the victims of Chernobyl in their zeal to discredit the Communists. Between May 1990 and March 1991, at the request of the Soviet government, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, the World Health Organisation and the European Community organised the Chernobyl Pro- ject, sending a team of 220 western scien- tists to the areas of the former Soviet Union affected by the accident.

These scientists later reported that they could find no difference between the health of those living in the contaminated and uncontaminated zones. The chief mis- take made by the Soviet authorities had been to apply too strict a criterion for evac- uation. The harm caused by other pollu- tants in the industrially ravaged Ukraine nitrates, pesticides, and so on — is proba- bly greater than that caused by a low dose of radiation.

There was also the damage done by stress, taking peasants from pleasant wood- en houses in ancestral villages and moving them to box-like flats in the suburbs of Minsk. Above all, the foreign scientists vis- iting the Ukraine thought it absurd for a state on the verge of bankruptcy to spend billions of roubles on evacuation when there were so many other more urgent calls on the public purse — not least the need for food.

This advice was rejected. By then, the party line had changed. The Communists had been ousted, the democrats were in power; and it had become part of the democrats' mythology that the Communists Tor God's sake, get me out of here.' had left the people to die. New posts had been created for Chernobyl activists. There was now a minister for Chernobyl in each of the affected republics with a staff to enforce an elaborate Chernobyl law. Like the Trojan horse, the ecological movement had served its purpose (membership of the Ukrainian ecological movement, Green World, dropped from 500,000 in 1989 to 18,000 today) but its dogmas had to be pre- served.

Given what they had suffered from Bol- sheviks and their heirs, it is understandable that the anti-Communists should have used Chernobyl in this way. The attitude of the western press and television is less forgiv- able. On the fourth anniversary of the acci- dent, the Sunday Times published a story saying that as a result of Chernobyl whole wards in 'hospitals in the Ukraine, Byelorussia and adjacent provinces of Great Russia . .. are lined with gaunt, dying and deformed children'. In Kiev, mY requests to see these victims were met with embarrassment. A leading campaigner against official secrecy over Chernobyl, the botanist Professor Dimitri Grodzinski, told me that these stories were nonsense. He showed me magazines that had used pho- tographs of thalidomide children to illus- trate articles on the consequences of Chernobyl.

The 220 western scientists of the Cher- nobyl Project reached the same conclusion. No statistically significant evidence was found of an increase in foetal anomalies as a result of radiation exposure. At the con- ference in Vienna held between 21 and 24 May 1991 to discuss these findings, the American expert, Professor Fred Mettler, was challenged by a Polish specialist, Pro- fessor Nauman, but only on the grounds that he had no real control group with which to compare the malformation rate. `Isn't it true,' Nauman said, 'that genetic changes should be expected only ten, twenty or thirty years later?' (my italics). In other words, even a critic of the experts' findings did not suggest that current birth defects can be ascribed to Chernobyl.

Yet the stories persist. The Daily Tele- graph, on the sixth anniversary of the acci- dent, described a film made by a Ukrainian, Maria Obrazova, showing chil- dren born with fish-tails as a result of the disaster. More recently, on 7 August 1992, the Telegraph described a child with one arm as a 'Chernobyl victim . . . with defor- mities caused by radioactive fallout'. The Independent on 31 March 1993 showed a deformed and dying child 'in a Byelorus- sian hospital' and quotes a Dr Mary Bren- nan to the effect that 'the incidence of congenital malformation also increased dramatically'. On Monday 5 April 1993, World in Action screened a documentary, Children of Chernobyl, that is typical of those shown every April as we approach the anniversary of the accident. A gloomy commentary is intercut with sick and deformed children, their weeping mothers, and doctors who ascribe these afflictions to Chernobyl. No attempt is made to relate anecdotal evidence to the discoveries of the highly researched Chernobyl Project.

So, too, in the newspapers and maga- zines there are and will continue to be countless grainy photographs showing bald children with leukaemia which suggest that their hair has fallen out as a result of radia- tion from Chernobyl, when in fact radiation is frequently part of the treatment for leukaemia, a massive dose to kill off the cancerous blood cells. The leukaemia itself may or may not have been caused by radia- tion from Chernobyl.

Certainly, an increase in leukaemia and thyroid cancer is expected as a result of Chernobyl. But even here one must be cau- tious because of the absence of reliable base statistics. And the scale of the tragedy must be kept in proportion. A letter to Nature from Byelorussian specialists in September, 1992, reported that in the Gomel region of Byelorussia, the incidence of child thyroid cancer had risen from four cases a year between 1986 and 1989 to 55 in 1991. Sixty were expected in 1992. How- ever, thyroid cancer can be treated: the cancer had spread in only six cases, and one child had died. One child.

Again, it is understandable that the doc- tors and hospital managers in Byelorussia and the Ukraine should look to the West for help. The bad health of the population and the lack of medicines and equipment in the hospitals make it irresistible for them to use the accident at Chernobyl to dramatise their appeals for much-needed cash. It is the same with the Chernobyl charities. Children, supposedly suffering as a result of Chernobyl, are sent for holidays in the West. Most are perfectly healthy. Andrew Ceelem, the director of a Dutch charity, Christian Care East-West, whom I met in Moscow, said that few of the chil- dren sent by the Russian charity, Cher- nobyl Help, were sick and what illness they found had nothing to do with radiation. In London, one of the children from Cher- nobyl was found to be the daughter of a former party leader living in Moscow.

Money and medical supplies sent to Byelorussia and the Ukraine have been known to go astray. Cornelia Wendt, the representative of the Bavarian Red Cross in Kiev, told me that she personally had to supervise the delivery of donated medical supplies to the hospitals (at the time she was dealing with 250,000 syringes) to pre- vent them disappearing into the black mar- ket. It is hardly surprising that people desperate for western goods and western currency should make the most of Cher- nobyl. Western journalists should know better than to fall for their tall stories.

An excerpt from Ablaze: The Story of Chernobyl by Piers Paul Read will appear in the Daily Telegraph on 24 April.