# Professor John Crown: " Chernobyl did not cause increase in birth defects"



## Brendan Burgess (12 Feb 2012)

Excellent article by Crowner on why we need nuclear energy. In particular, it was interesting to read his data on the impact of Chernobyl.



> t is widely assumed that the medical and health consequences were vast, with    some speculating that hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of deaths had    occurred as a result. In addition, who can forget the harrowing, horrifying,    heart-rending pictures of deformed children born in the region in the    aftermath of the disaster, children whose birth defects were blamed    specifically on radiation poisoning?
> 
> Irish people responded with characteristic generosity to appeals for aid, and    millions of punts were collected for relief programs which brought children    for holidays in Ireland. It was claimed that weeks spent here added years to    their life expectancy.
> 
> ...


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## Brendan Burgess (12 Feb 2012)

I wonder how much we, as a nation, gave to these Chernobyl children's charities?


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## Lex Foutish (12 Feb 2012)

Regardless of who wrote the report, I find it hard to believe that such a huge release of radiation didn't have some effect on birth defects. It's interesting to note that Mr. Crown, the author of the article, is in favour of Ireland using nuclear power. One could argue that "he would say that, wouldn't he?"

Having said that, I think Ireland's future use of nuclear power is a debate we need to have. I think it would be quite immoral of us to be anti nuclear-generated power but willing to import nuclear-generated power on an inter-connector from, e.g., Britain.

Personally, I am very open to the notion of Ireland having its own nuclear power plant. If we're not willing to harness wind and wave power on a fairly large scale, we may not have any other option in future years.


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## Brendan Burgess (12 Feb 2012)

> Regardless of who wrote the report, I find it hard to believe


Dead right Lex.

Ignore the science and the statistics and the views of the Professor of Oncology in UCD  - go with the gut feel you get from seeing pictures of poor deformed kids  in the paper.



> Chairman of Molecular Therapeutics for Cancer Ireland. Lectured in  more than 40 countries. Degrees in medicine, science and business  administration. Awarded professorships in cancer research from Dublin  City University and University College Dublin.
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## ajapale (12 Feb 2012)

Brendan,

Do you have a link to the primary data?

aj


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## Brendan Burgess (12 Feb 2012)

UN Scientific Committe on the Effects of Radiation



> *Conclusions*
> 
> The accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1986 was a  tragic event for its victims, and those most affected suffered major  hardship. Some of the people who dealt with the emergency lost their  lives. Although those exposed as children and the emergency and recovery  workers are at increased risk of radiation-induced effects, the vast  majority of the population need not live in fear of serious health  consequences due to the radiation from the Chernobyl accident. For the  most part, they were exposed to radiation levels comparable to or a few  times higher than annual levels of natural background, and future  exposures continue to slowly diminish as the radionuclides decay. Lives  have been seriously disrupted by the Chernobyl accident, but from the  radiological point of view, generally positive prospects for the future  health of most individuals should prevail.


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## Latrade (13 Feb 2012)

BBC's Horizon covered this a good few years ago (maybe even as many as 5), it didn't go down well IIRC. 

But as a large scale study of the effects of radiation it has been pretty conclusive that it might just not be as bad as we predicted. However, it just isn't "done" to come out and say or show that.

In the Horizon doc, it showed how nature took over the abandoned zone very quickly. Ever since they have studied the wildlife population and even though the radiation levels in the animal population is sky high, there are no observable effects either on birth rate or death rate. 

By accident we've conducted one of the biggest scientific studies into the effects of radiation and found out that life is a tough old sod.


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## Niall M (13 Feb 2012)

*There was an increase in thyroid cancer in children - *are we just going to ignore this part. Straight after your highlighted paragraph....


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## Sunny (13 Feb 2012)

Niall M said:


> *There was an increase in thyroid cancer in children - *are we just going to ignore this part. Straight after your highlighted paragraph....


 
And are you going to ignore the rest of it? *This is a rare disease, and one which is near-uniformly curable. In the aftermath of Chernobyl it remained rare and remained near-uniformly curable. It is estimated that one new case per million children per year occurred worldwide. In the most heavily irradiated areas, the incidence reached 100 per million.*

Worrying but hardly fits in with the terror stories that often float around. 

There are just as serious health effects for the people who responded to the 9/11 emergency in NY as there was for any nuclear accident.


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## T McGibney (13 Feb 2012)

Lex Foutish said:


> It's interesting to note that Mr. Crown, the author of the article, is in favour of Ireland using nuclear power. One could argue that "he would say that, wouldn't he?"



Sorry, I'm missing your logic here.  Dr. Crown is a doctor not Monty Burns.


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## Latrade (13 Feb 2012)

Sunny said:


> And are you going to ignore the rest of it? *This is a rare disease, and one which is near-uniformly curable. In the aftermath of Chernobyl it remained rare and remained near-uniformly curable. It is estimated that one new case per million children per year occurred worldwide. In the most heavily irradiated areas, the incidence reached 100 per million.*
> 
> Worrying but hardly fits in with the terror stories that often float around.
> 
> There are just as serious health effects for the people who responded to the 9/11 emergency in NY as there was for any nuclear accident.


 
It is still worth flagging up though. The increase is directly attributed to radiation and curing it is a matter of having enough or ready access to iodine (that isn't out of date). 

It doesn't fit into the birth defects and cancer scare stories, but it was an immediate risk and it remains a risk as long as the radiation remains. Most of the deaths linked to Chernobyl were the workers either killed in the explosion or from acute exposure to massive doses, however, all the other fatalities were children and as a result of thyroid cancer.

What rarely gets a mention is that because of the fear of bith defects and cancer rates, the Soviet Government had a programme of forced abortion on a massive scale. Some mothers did escape and had their children, who are all fine and healthy.


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## Brendan Burgess (13 Feb 2012)

LA



> It is still worth flagging up though. The increase is directly  attributed to radiation and curing it is a matter of having enough or  ready access to iodine (that isn't out of date).



Are you confusing curing with preventing? 

I understand that by taking iodine as soon as there is a radiation leak, you are stuffing your thyroid with iodine. There is no room left for the radioactive iodine, so you don't get thyroid cancer.

What Crowner is saying is that if a child gets cancer (because they did not take iodine) it is near uniformly curable anyway. 

Brendan


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## Latrade (13 Feb 2012)

Brendan Burgess said:


> LA
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Yup I am, apologies. The use of iodine is to prevent the build up of radioactive isotopes in the thyroid.


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## michaelm (13 Feb 2012)

Brendan Burgess said:


> Excellent article by Crowner on why we need nuclear energy. In particular, it was interesting to read his data on the impact of Chernobyl.


Better late than never, we should build 3 nuclear power stations now.  Can you post a link to his article?


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## Brendan Burgess (13 Feb 2012)

Sorry, I thought I had put it in the first post. 

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/a...was-distorted-by-chernobyl-tales-3017002.html


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## csirl (13 Feb 2012)

None of what this guy says is new. This has been well known and accepted in the scientific community for years. Unfortunately there are people in this world who like to exaggerate the effects of things like this for political, financial or ideological gain. Shame on them.


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## Brendan Burgess (13 Feb 2012)

csirl said:


> None of what this guy says is new. This has been well known and accepted in the scientific community for years. .



Hi CS

But he has a good platform in the SINDO and he is a Senator. So it's good to hear him raise these issues. 

I would guess that if you stopped people on the street and showed them all the Chernobyl babies they would tell you that it was due to radiation.

This is what Adi Roche's website says today. They claim to have raised €90m over the last 25 years. With a big staff, I am sure that they have. 



> *A new generation struggles to live in the shadow of Chernobyl*
> 
> A  new generation has been born into the most toxic environment in the  world, and they are paying the price with their fragile bodies. Birth  defects have increased by 200 percent in affected areas, and congenital  deformities have increased by 250 percent. Chernobyl’s children carry  genetic markers whose long-term effects no one can predict, and the  consequences of ongoing radioactive contamination will not be fully seen  for another 50 years.


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## Imperator (13 Feb 2012)

Professor William Reville wrote about the issue a number of years ago in The Irish Times (Dec 2005 I think). He said pretty much the same thing as Crown - minimal damage to human health was caused by radiation. But there was a huge upsurge in psychological problems (post traumatic stress, substance abuse, etc.. No doubt some of this was caused by forced relocation and fear of the unknown. There probably was a small increase in Thyroid cancer but the majority of the cases were treated. If you have a subscription to the Irish Times you should be able to access the article.


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## Imperator (13 Feb 2012)

Just to note.

Taking iodine tablets will prevent the uptake of iodine in the body. It won't prevent the uptake of all the other radioactive compounds that could be released in an explosion.


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## werner (13 Feb 2012)

Brendan Burgess said:


> I wonder how much we, as a nation, gave to these Chernobyl children's charities?


 
It was no bad thing as these children, many with both physical and mental development problems were in a very sad state due to state neglect, even though it was mis-represented by many as being due to "radiation".

Some good was done for them though I despaired at seeing it all being blamed on "radiation"


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## werner (13 Feb 2012)

Niall M said:


> *There was an increase in thyroid cancer in children - *are we just going to ignore this part. Straight after your highlighted paragraph....


 
Here is the W.H.O. (World Health Organisation) organisations figures from the 2005 report

"About 4000 cases of thyroid cancer, mainly in children and adolescents at the time of the accident, have resulted from the accident’s contamination and at least nine children died of thyroid cancer; however the survival rate among such cancer victims, judging from experience in Belarus, has been almost 99%."

"The report’s estimate for the eventual number of deaths is far lower than earlier, well-publicized speculations that radiation exposure would claim tens of thousands of lives. But the 4000 figure is not far different from estimates made in 1986 by Soviet scientists, according to Dr Mikhail Balonov, a radiation expert with the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, who was a scientist in the former Soviet Union at the time of the accident"

Though the leak was may have been potentially horrendous, if you take into account the nuclear bomb devastion of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the fate of the surviviors and their offspring and their childrens offspring the atomic bomb radiation had very little impact on subsequent generations


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## Brendan Burgess (13 Feb 2012)

> the nuclear bomb devastion of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the fate of the  surviviors and their offspring and their childrens offspring the atomic  bomb radiation had very little impact on subsequent generations



werner - that is very interesting. Is there any official data on this to which you can link?


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## werner (15 Feb 2012)

Brendan Burgess said:


> werner - that is very interesting. Is there any official data on this to which you can link?


 
From Hiroshima please see this link


Despite the horrible initial effects of a nuclear explosion, and the atomic bombing of Japan resulted in incredible levels of exposure of radiation and contaminated a huge area of the Japanese population, subsequent generations suffered little after effects.

Today, the safety margin for exposure to radiation levels is in the order of 1000 times to 10,000 times (and even higher!) above the level of a exceptionally low base line, i.e. there is a huge safety margin built in, too huge in many scientific opinions and tests to have any real validity but it is there to reassure the general population.


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## Splash (15 Feb 2012)

I spent some time in Belarus near the contamination zone working in an orphanage a decade ago. I did not see children with deformities; what I did see was the huge state neglect of damaged kids who had been left there by alcoholic parents. There were a number of deaf children, however, who could say if this was down to radiation?
In some cases, kids had grandparents outside who did what they could; and the over-worked staff in the orphanage who did their best to care for their welfare were heart-warming.
It was desperately sad. However, I came away with a slightly jaundiced view of the arguments put forward by some Irish aid charities about deformities and radiation. The problems in Belarus is grinding poverty, alcoholism, neglect of its population by its government, and yes, disabilities in the general population.


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## Brendan Burgess (16 Feb 2012)

Hi Splash

But this must be the state of affairs in many second and third world countries - it is not linked to Chernobyl. Unless you blame the alcoholism on Chernobyl? 

Brendan


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## Splash (17 Feb 2012)

Hi Brendan, no I agree, I don't think the alcoholism is related to what happened in 1986. Vodka is cheap and plentiful, and life there is tough, the winters are cold, and people are living under a dictatorship.


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## csirl (20 Feb 2012)

I've always thought it strange that the charities focus on Belarus, even though Chernobyl is in Ukraine. Strange how people in the immediate area, which is close to Kiev seem to have been largely unaffected, yet those further away in Belarus are all supposed to be suffering. Doesnt add up.


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## terrysgirl33 (20 Feb 2012)

AFAIK it is because of the direction the wind was blowing in at the time of the accident.  The explosion was in Ukraine, but most of the radiation ended up in Belarus.

ETA link to map:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Chernobyl_radiation_map_1996.svg

Chernobyl appears to be on the border with Belarus.


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