In 1987-1988, 12 cases of children's leukemia and 13 cases of adult's leukemia were registered in the Bryansk, Smolensk, Oryol and Kaluga districts of the Russian Republic. In the Zlynkov area of Bryansk, 74 case of iron deficiency anemia were registered in 1987, whereas two years later there were 120. Though extremely hard-hit by Chernobyl's fallout, these areas were not classified as "disaster zones" until 1990, four years after the accident occurred. There are 1,374,000 people living in these areas. Yet, according to official evacuation plans, only 84,000 are to be resettled.
Meanwhile, medical care in all the affected areas is largely absent. Almost all medical doctors have left these areas, and medical personnel tends to be represented largely by scientific researchers. Medical care is substituted for by scientific examinations -- research -- by visiting medics. A new independent Soviet news-paper, "Megapolis-Continent", reports on this problem in its December 1990 issue, severely criticizing the prevailing approach to the Chernobyl-affected areas for turning them into test laboratories rather than providing the needed health care. The newspaper particularly criticizes the spending of over one million rubles on the facilitation of investigations in these areas by experts from Canada, Brazil, Denmark, USA, Japan and other countries.
Despite all this investigation, there are few reliable reports on the health consequences of the Chernobyl accident available. According to Zhores Medvedev, one of the few competent reports on health is from an investigation completed in February 1990 by the Commission of the Research Institute of Radiation Health of the Byelorussian Ministry of Health on the population of Strelichevo Soviet from the Khoiniki district of Gomel (Byelorussia). This is a heavily contaminated area with cesium-137 contamination levels of about 40 curies per square km and Strontium-90 between 1-4 curies per square km. (Curie is the old unit of activity which has been replaced by the becquerel. One curie equals 37 billion radio-active disintegrations per second of any radionuclide.) The results of the study show problems with the immune system.
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According to Dr. Gundula Bahro in a paper presented at the Congress on Nuclear Phase-Out held by the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) in March 1990, 420 villages should have been evacuated immediately following the accident. For the full paper, write to: Dr. Gundula Bahro, Grandweg 91, D-2000 Hamburg 54, FRG, tel: +49-40-567259. |
In spite of the heavy contamination, and the fact that the Khoiniki District is part of the "Chernobyl zone" (area of "strict radiation control"), agricultural use of the area has continued since the accident. The population of the area is (as of 1 January 1990) 2310, including 1954 adults (50% of whom were examined for this study) and 356 children (37 of whom were under one year of age and of whom 90%-95% were examined).
The investigation shows that 25% of the adult population, including teenagers and young men and women, suffers from distortions of the vegetative nervous system and hypertension. Incidence of increased rate of sweating, acrocyanosis, fluctuations of blood pressure and heart rate during the daytime, palpitation as well as distortion of sleep, states of fear, depression, melancholy and anxiety, etc. is in this area of "strict radiation control" much higher than in other areas of Gomel. Twelve percent of the people examined have hypertonic disease (high tension or tone, especially in muscles) in a heavier form than on average (43.4% are at the 1st degree level, 46.5% are 2nd degree, and 10.1% are 3rd degree). The commission explains this situation by "social/psychological and moral consequences of radiation impact, destruction of the society's structural organization, the adults' concern about their children's future..."
The analysis of medical/demographic data on the Khoiniki area shows no significant changes in 1985-1989 in terms of cancer and leukemia mortalities and the death rate in general. However, in 1989, thyroid cancer morbidities as well as the number of congenital anomalies increased significantly. The increase of congenital anomalies in particular was found to be the primary reason for the increase in infant mortality in the area.
The children examined were classified by "health groups" of which there were four. The first of these groups consisted of children considered to be "children with normal development -- without health deviations", while groups 2-4 were based on increasing pathologies. Only 3.9% of the Khoiniki schoolchildren and 6.7% of the pre-school children could be classified in the first group. The percentage of children in the third group (26.3% of the schoolchildren and 24.8% of the pre-school children) is much higher than in the control group from the (relatively "clean") Braslavski district in Vitebsk (17.2%). Unfortunately the commission did not have health data on children from the Khoiniki area before 1986, but for further comparison they note that between 1976-1978 in the Polesya area of Byelo-russia only 14.5% (plus-minus 0.4%) of the schoolchildren fell into the 3rd group of school-children.
Among other conclusions drawn by the commission, the following was noted: the treatment and cure of gastritis and gastroduodenal ulcer in the contaminated area is much more difficult than in other (less contaminated) areas. The com-mission explains this phenomenon by patients' "psychological depression and probable impact of radiation."
Sources:
- The Commission of the Research Institute of Radiation Health of the Byelorussian Ministry of Health's report on the health of the population of the Khoiniki District (USSR), Feb. 1990 (a Russian-language copy is available from WISE-Amsterdam)
- Megapolis-Continent (USSR), Dec. 1990
- Miles Goldstick, "Nuclear Words and Terms" (Third Edition, Oct. 1990)
Contact: For further information on the health consequences in the USSR following the Chernobyl accident, write to: Dr. Rosalie Bertell, International Institute of concern for Public Health, 830 Bathurst Street, Toronto, Ontario M5R 3G1, Canada; Dr. Gundula Bahro (see accompanying box) (see also, WISE News Communique 330.3294).
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