Love,
Dad
According to the official United Nations report (p. 66) on
the accident, just two workers, not dozens, or hundreds, were killed within a
few hours of the explosion. Neither of the workers died from radiation.
One was killed by the rubble from the explosion and the other by thermal burns
from the fire.
Two weeks later, firefighters and first responders started to
die. Having been burned in the fire appears to have played a major role.
Two-thirds of the Chernobyl first responders who died had thermal (fire) burns
in addition to having been exposed to extremely high levels of radiation.
According to the United
Nations, 31 deaths are directly attributable to
the accident. Three people died at the scene of the accident and 28 died
several weeks later. Since then, 19 died for ”various reasons”
including tuberculosis, cirrhosis of the liver, heart attacks, and trauma. The
U.N. concluded that “the assignment of radiation as the cause of death has become
less clear.”
What about cancers? There have been 20,000 documented cases of
thyroid cancer in those aged under 18 at the time of the accident, and the UN’s
most recent white paper from
2017 concludes that only 25%, i.e. 5,000, can be attributed to Chernobyl
radiation (see paragraphs A - C in the Executive Summary).
In earlier studies, the UN estimated
there could be up to 16,000 cases attributable to Chernobyl radiation. Since
thyroid cancer has a mortality rate of just one percent, that means the
expected deaths from thyroid cancers caused by Chernobyl will be 50 to 160,
with the vast majority of them occurring in the elderly.
That’s it. There is no reliable
evidence that radiation from Chernobyl caused an increase in any other disease
or malady including birth defects.
