DEATH TOLL: While the IAEA and WHO claim 50 deaths can be directly attributed to the Chernobyl disaster, leading scientists and doctors say the total could be 500,000
THE GUARDIAN , LONDON
Sunday, Mar 26, 2006,Page 6
<snip> The new estimates have been collated by researchers commissioned by European parliamentary groups, Greenpeace International and medical foundations in Britain, Germany, Ukraine, Scandinavia and elsewhere. They take into account more than 50 published scientific studies.
"At least 500,000 people -- perhaps more -- have already died out of the two million people who were officially classed as victims of Chernobyl in Ukraine," said Nikolai Omelyanets, deputy head of the National Commission for Radiation Protection in Ukraine. "
that 34,499 people who took part in the clean-up of Chernobyl have died in the years since the catastrophe. The deaths of these people from cancers was nearly three times as high as in the rest of the population.
"We have found that infant mortality increased 20 percent to 30 percent because of chronic exposure to radiation after the accident. All this information has been ignored by the IAEA and WHO. We sent it to them in March last year and again in June. They've not said why they haven't accepted it," he said.
Evgenia Stepanova, of the Ukrainian government's Scientific Center for Radiation Medicine, said: "We're overwhelmed by thyroid cancers, leukaemias and genetic mutations that are not recorded in the WHO data and which were practically unknown 20 years ago." <snip>
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