Chernobyl - Disaster or Myth?

williamgrogan

Your refusal to make an educated guess at yes or no answeres speaks volumes

I'm sorry I cannot as I do not know the amount of money spent on health care by the Belarus government from their own resources v that donated by outside agencies, so I cannot make an educated guess. If all there is is the 50 cent per year per person donated by CCP then obviously the outside agencies have made no measurable difference. It could well be that Belarus is quite self sufficient in medical resources, the large Doctor/Patient ratio would indicate this.

The risks and factors of both types of radiation are quite different

I agree but humans can still withstand a certain level of radiation without spouting extra arms in subsequent generations. Most of the large doses were in the immediate aftermath of the accident. Precautions have been taken since to reduce exposure. There was a clean up.

I do accept we are nit picking now to some extent as we all agree that the effect was exaggerated but consider the following…

10,000,000 Belarusians will die in the coming 70 years.
3,000,000 will get cancer
700,000 will die early from smoking.
Several hundred thousand will die early from alcohol abuse and bad diet.
~70,000 will die in car accidents

A handful may die from Thyroid cancer caused by Chernobyl.

After that …. pure speculation.

If the Irish Times and other newspapers did not have erroneous headlines within days of the explosion such as “2,000 dead in Nuclear Disaster” and if there was no worldwide anti-Nuclear movement would we be discussing the possibility that there might be a tiny increase in cancers caused by this accident? I have no doubt that many people will die early deaths due to the massive pollution caused by industry because under communism there was little or no respect for the environment or for the safety of the workers. This applies to their Nuclear Industry as well.

Does this excuse the activities of the various charities that in my opinion collect money under false pretences?

The following is from CCP web site, http://www.adiccp.org/whatwedo/restandrecuperation.asp

"For each child taken to Ireland they are "returned" two years of life. We are hostages to the hazardous aftermath of radiation, and the future of our very race is threatened with extinction, as our children, our gene pool, are seriously ill."

Do you agree with this? In particular with the stuff in bold.

I do know that in the past the Belarus government stopped convoys of aid until “tax” was paid.

GuanYin

Originally posted by PaulP
I cannot understand how you have a problem with this. I cannot understand why in this one question you think it is ok to throw out standard scientific methodology in favour of ad hoc, make-it-up-as-we-go flummery. Surely in the matter of human life and death, the most valuable thing we have, we should be using the best of everything we have?

Basically what I'm saying is in the case of Chernobyl, where there is poor economy and travel infrastructure, a former communist country, foreign workers (who would previously have been trated with suspicion) and untrained staff, the bias of these surveys is often looking at reported incidence of those coming to clinics and hospitals or a survey of populations where occurance is expected. What the ned to do, if basically randomly choose a population to survey, either general hospital admittance, an open clinic or even door to door. If you read the epidemiological literature, this is well documented.

This will give a biased result because it is not a random population or a blind survey.
*IF* you get a rise in incidence that is not statistically significant, it does not mean that there is no statistically significant rise nor does it mean that there is a rise. It could be that they actually have surveyed all affected and that the slight rise is all that there is. Or it means that they may have surveyed some of the expected norm and some of those caused by the accident (and the ration will be unknown) and that those not taken into account by the survey would swing the result either way.

The fact that there is a slight rise is noted as significant (and by this we mean the english language definition of the word...perhap they should have said "noteworthy", I didn't write or edit these particular papers, nor did I coin the term in this reference, I'm just conveying the message) because the survey isn't blind. The literature tentatively notes that there is no significant rise. However, they also state that the surveys are loaded. This is poor reporting in itself because it allows either side of the extremists to twist the findings in their favour.

I would take it as "It looks like there probably is a small but significant rise, but we really need to do a proper population study to be sure" which would probably make it into a medical paper as "the resulst are inconclusive"

It has always been my contention that we would be 100 years more scientifically advanced if scientists were taught how to write papers in simple concise english.

Originally posted by PaulP
You describe the results in these papers as significant but admit they are not statistically significant. So when you describe them as significant you are not speaking as a statistician and are therefore speaking outside your area of expertise. In which case you are expecting me to accept your authority in an area in which you are not an authority, which is a fairly basic logical fallacy.


And BTW you have yet to define "significant" as you are using it here.

Apart from putting words in my mouth and using loaded logic, you are missing the point entirely here. I am not describing anything as significant, I am relaying the message of these papers in a way that is neither biased or loaded. Excuse me if I didn't dwell on pedantic games of semantics and word definitions. I have tried to convey to overall general message, rather than pick and poke at single word definitions. This is because I am not trying to bias the argument for my own means in any way.

The only "authority" that I tried to put forward is my knowledge and experience in dealing with the different types of scientific literature. I've yet to see anyone else on this thread reference anything but websites (and very biased websites it should benoted), which begs the question, if *THEY* know so much about scientific journal reporting then why weren't tehy referencing these sources themselves.

I think the above paragraph shouldn't leave any questions in your mind about what the message in the journal is. If it does, please state the specifics.

GuanYin

Originally posted by williamgrogan
I'm sorry I cannot as I do not know the amount of money spent on health care by the Belarus government from their own resources v that donated by outside agencies, so I cannot make an educated guess. If all there is is the 50 cent per year per person donated by CCP then obviously the outside agencies have made no measurable difference. It could well be that Belarus is quite self sufficient in medical resources, the large Doctor/Patient ratio would indicate this.

That is a rather convenient about turn from your earlier statement that "The semi-totalitarian nature of the current Belarus government" and otehr references to the post communist regime. You really think that Belarus would have a health system of the standard it does without outside influence? I think you are being conveniently blind to further your own argument.

Originally posted by williamgrogan
I do accept we are nit picking now to some extent as we all agree that the effect was exaggerated but consider the following…

10,000,000 Belarusians will die in the coming 70 years.
3,000,000 will get cancer
700,000 will die early from smoking.
Several hundred thousand will die early from alcohol abuse and bad diet.
~70,000 will die in car accidents

Semantics, by this reasoning 911, The Madrid Rail Bombings, Titanic, Lockerbie and evern the Iranian Earthquake were not disasters.

The fact of the matter is that the people of Chernobyl sufferened death and disease that they would not otherwise have suffered. Thousands are effected when you measured the combined disease, depression, economic and social repercussions of Chernobyl, not to mention associated pestilence that occured.

Originally posted by williamgrogan
A handful may die from Thyroid cancer caused by Chernobyl.

Last post you implied that they would all recover, now you say a handful. Considering your inconsistant arguement, again I say:Says who?
Can you show me facts, statistics and peer reviewed sources to show that this is nothing more than an uninformed opinion on your part?

Originally posted by williamgrogan
If the Irish Times and other newspapers did not have erroneous headlines within days of the explosion such as “2,000 dead in Nuclear Disaster” and if there was no worldwide anti-Nuclear movement would we be discussing the possibility that there might be a tiny increase in cancers caused by this accident? I have no doubt that many people will die early deaths due to the massive pollution caused by industry because under communism there was little or no respect for the environment or for the safety of the workers. This applies to their Nuclear Industry as well.

Does this excuse the activities of the various charities that in my opinion collect money under false pretences?
<SNIP>

I have no idea why you bringthe rest of this up?

Do you thin it will be some victory for your standpointif I conceed these points?

I never argued them in the first place so is this some kind of diversion or did you have a point tomake with me?

Victor

Originally posted by syke
That is a rather convenient about turn from your earlier statement that "The semi-totalitarian nature of the current Belarus government" and otehr references to the post communist regime. You really think that Belarus would have a health system of the standard it does without outside influence? I think you are being conveniently blind to further your own argument.

Eh, I think the policy in the Soviet Union was to have quite a large number of doctors per capita, although typically they were paid teacher level rather than western doctor level salaries. I'm not certain a 10 year old figure is necessarily representative of today.

Yes Chernobyl did contribute to the fall of communism - the Soviet leadership realised that 10 or 100 Chernobyls would devastate the country, nevermind 10,000.

To say there has only been 40 or so deaths would be to grossly underestimate the effect had the civil defence program not been undertaken (which did include iodine doses being distributed, although questions are now being raised about iodine).

PaulP

Syke:

I trained as a physicist. It was taught to me that when dealing with statistics the minimum acceptable was to deal with the appropriate statistical standards, which in this case and pretty much everywhere else are tests of statistical significance. If this is expected of physicists, chemists, biologists etc then I do not see why medical or medical-statistical researchers cannot be held to the same standards.


As for the papers in question they fail to meet this minimum standard for being taken seriously in science, so the idea that there are ill-health effects from the accident in the general population remains unproven scientifically. Which is what we are debating here.


One of the more interesting logical fallacies is the category error. For example if a falling meteorite kills someone it is a category error to treat it as murder. One of the aspects of progress is to figure out the appropriate category for analysing a phenomenon and then to use the intellectual apparutus we have invented/discovered appropriate to that category. When faced with the problem of determining whether something has increased rates of illness the appropriate category is statistical analysis and the apparatus is tests of statistical significance. Nothing else is good enough.


BTW: and here I am getting a little fed up with you: you introduced your experience as a medical-statistical researcher laymen. Yet your expertise should have told you that the papers you cited did not pass muster. Instead, as far as I am concerned, in a show of bad faith you attempted to engage in intellectual bullying of your opponents in an effort to gloss over the lack of the only relevant significance in the papers' results. Statistical significance is not an option, it is a necessity, and a fairly bare one at that.

williamgrogan

I was reminded of something Oscar Wilde said when I saw the news tonight, showing the 14 truck loads of aid head off to the, "victims of the Chernobyl disaster".

************
When The Old Curiosity Shop was approaching its emotional climax -- the death of Little Nell -- Dickens was inundated with letters imploring him to spare her, and felt, as he said, "the anguish unspeakable," but proceeded with the artistically necessary event. Readers were desolated. The famous actor William Macready wrote in his diary that "I have never read printed words that gave me so much pain. . . . I could not weep for some time. Sensations, sufferings have returned to me, that are terrible to awaken." Daniel O'Connell, the great Irish member of Parliament, read the account of Nell's death while he was riding on a train, burst into tears, cried "He should not have killed her," and threw the novel out of the window in despair. Even Carlyle, who had not previously succumbed to Dickens's emotional manipulation, was overcome with grief, and crowds in New York awaited a vessel newly arriving from England with shouts of "Is Little Nell dead?"

Oscar Wilde, who was no fan of Dickens, would later say, “.. no one could read the death-scene of Little Nell without dissolving into tears -- of laughter”

GuanYin

Originally posted by PaulP
I trained as a physicist. It was taught to me that when dealing with statistics the minimum acceptable was to deal with the appropriate statistical standards, which in this case and pretty much everywhere else are tests of statistical significance. If this is expected of physicists, chemists, biologists etc then I do not see why medical or medical-statistical researchers cannot be held to the same standards.

Whatever you may have learned as a physicist doesn't mean anything in the world of biological and medical sciences. All disciplines have their "ways" which can be attributed to the nature of the discipline. Medicine and Biology aren't as clear cut as Physics when it comes to research in any case.

I don't know where or why you would think that it is *expected* of biologists and medics in their journals. Pick up any genetics journal where the presence of a gene is indicated by a band achieved by a southern blot. You will often see a band described as "significantly" brighter or "negligable". While these can be statsictically measured using sophisticated imaging software, they rarely are in publciations. There are many examples of this throught the different branches. In the cases of Pharmacology you will see a greater trend towards statistics in the literature, but different sciences use different language, it doesn't make their standards less, it just means you are not trained to understand it.

Originally posted by PaulP
As for the papers in question they fail to meet this minimum standard for being taken seriously in science, so the idea that there are ill-health effects from the accident in the general population remains unproven scientifically. Which is what we are debating here.

The papers are a very high standard, they just don't use language you are used to. I tried to explain it simply in lay language for you to understand, you seem unhappy with this.

Originally posted by PaulP
One of the more interesting logical fallacies is the category error. For example if a falling meteorite kills someone it is a category error to treat it as murder. One of the aspects of progress is to figure out the appropriate category for analysing a phenomenon and then to use the intellectual apparutus we have invented/discovered appropriate to that category. When faced with the problem of determining whether something has increased rates of illness the appropriate category is statistical analysis and the apparatus is tests of statistical significance. Nothing else is good enough.

For you perhaps, but you aren't atrained biologist and I'm sure you would have come across the old adage if you ever went past undergraduate physics (or even as an undergraduate, depending on your brushes with research) that the most difficult aspects of multi-disciplinary sciences is the communication problems between the different sciences. I have pretty much explained the journal to you here, I'm quite happy to hold my hands up and say a physics journal or an organic chemistry journal would be lick reading arabic to me, mainly becaue I am not trained in those areas. You don't seem to get this :dunno:.

Originally posted by PaulP
BTW: and here I am getting a little fed up with you:

I think this is a rather personal statement. Its hardly my fault you don't realise that physics and biology are written for a different audience.

Originally posted by PaulP
you introduced your experience as a medical-statistical researcher laymen. Yet your expertise should have told you that the papers you cited did not pass muster. Instead, as far as I am concerned, in a show of bad faith you attempted to engage in intellectual bullying of your opponents in an effort to gloss over the lack of the only relevant significance in the papers' results. Statistical significance is not an option, it is a necessity, and a fairly bare one at that.

I never introduced my experience as a laymen of anything, least of all statistics. The journals I cited have some of the higher citations (specifically a couple of those papers). I don't think i tried intellectual bullying anywhere, however YOU have repeatedly casted insults at the qualifications and intelligence of otehrs with the tone and wordingof your posts (see above). I'll say it very simply for you. The word "significant" is an english dictionary word that does not HAVE to be statsitcially related. While MOST scientists will be wary of using it, medical people, who wouldn't be as verbose as the more pompous pre-clinical ilk (of which I'd probably be counted) aren't as au-fait with this, so you see a gap in language between clinical and pre-clinical. This doesn't effect the science if you understand what you are reading.

What part of this do you not understand?

Just as a matter of interest, is anyone else having difficulty with this point or am I explaining it poorly?

williamgrogan

The high ratio of doctors, 4.3 per thousand, at least goes back to 1994 so presumably before that and therefore was not affected by the consequences of the accident.

here is one of the most complete summaries I have read of the consequences of the accident, it is from the Nuclear Radiation Protection Board

http://www.nrpb.org/publications/bulletin/no1/editorial.htm

the Soviet leadership realised that 10 or 100 Chernobyls would devastate the country, nevermind 10,000.

I don't follow you here. A demand for openness (Glasnost) which gained strength after Chernobyl was probably the main contribution of the accident to reforms in the USSR. I don’t think the fear of other accidents was relevant.

To say there has only been 40 or so deaths would be to grossly underestimate the effect had the civil defence program not been undertaken (which did include iodine doses being distributed, although questions are now being raised about iodine).

Obviously if everyone sat around watching the fire and sat about in the radiation then far more would have died but that applies to any accident. The same could be said of a ‘flu epidemic.

The Iodine tablets were distributed too late, that was the main problem.

By coincidence, there was a letter to the Irish Times on Saturday which strongly advised the Irish Government to keep stock of Iodine and even suggested ensuring that salt sold in Ireland was iodised as a preventative measure.

See http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/letters/2004/0410/index.html#1079399174534

Extract:

Iodine tablets were issued not only for use in the aftermath of an accident at Sellafield but also in case of accidents at nuclear reactors elsewhere.

….. does not mean that we no longer need protection - as would be provided by the tablets - against the possible contamination of our thyroid glands.

Iodine tablets are effective against all kinds of radioactive iodine, not just iodine-131 as was reported. ….

The likelihood of an adverse effect from taking a tablet at the time of an accident is tiny and is outweighed by the collective protective effect. This was the experience in Poland in the aftermath of the Chernobyl accident.
….

A feature of the Chernobyl accident was the relative dietary iodine deficiency of the populations living around the reactor in Belarus, Ukraine and Russia, resulting in iodine-deficient thyroid glands taking up greater amounts of radioactive iodine. The most effective method of achieving iodine sufficiency recommended by the WHO is iodisation of table salt.

…..
……

It is to be hoped that the Department of Health, by considering iodine prophylaxis, will build on the success of its earlier proactive response to a potential nuclear threat and not be swayed by the aforementioned report. - Yours, etc.,

PETER SMYTH Ph.D, Iodine Study Unit, Conway Institute of Biomolecular and Biomedical Research, UCD, Dublin 4;

FJ TURVEY, Radiation and Environmental Science Centre, DIT, Dublin 2.

PS

I see that Belarus are through to the semi-finals of the Tennis Davis cup. They beat Argentina & Russia. I mention this just to add weight to the idea that Belarus is not some barren, radiation swept wilderness that some people might think it is, that some people try to fool us into thinking it is.

Victor

Will aborting deformed foetuses have made some of the figures supect (as it has in Cuba, where a high abotion rate on "medical" grounds has led to a lower infant mortality rate).

williamgrogan

Do the infant mortality rates not apply to births only?

Otherwise are you suggesting that there are that many pregnancies in Belarus, where the foetus is so deformed as a consequence of the accident, that it would cause those foetuses to die at birth and to affect the statistics negatively if they were not aborted?

Victor

Odd way to ask the question.

I am only asking a question. The pattern that emerged in Cuba was if a foetus had any deformity or condition that would seriously affect it's survival chances, it would be aborted.

davros

Originally posted by williamgrogan
I was reminded of something Oscar Wilde said when I saw the news tonight, showing the 14 truck loads of aid head off to the, "victims of the Chernobyl disaster" “.. no one could read the death-scene of Little Nell without dissolving into tears -- of laughter”

I can't read this as anything other than a gratuitously offensive insult to the other side of the debate.

Originally posted by PaulP
BTW: and here I am getting a little fed up with you: you introduced your experience as a medical-statistical researcher laymen. Yet your expertise should have told you that the papers you cited did not pass muster. Instead, as far as I am concerned, in a show of bad faith you attempted to engage in intellectual bullying...

Personalised attacks are not acceptable. You owe syke an apology, especially since he provided you with clear and complete answers to your questions.

Note to everybody: I have deliberately avoided banning people up until now. No longer. It is the only sanction I have left since appeals and warnings have not made the debates on this forum any more pleasant.

PaulP

Davros: So it's ok for Syke to refer to us as armchair experts but not for me to give an accurate description of the effect of what he wrote on me? Can you explain to me what his mention of his field of expertise was, other than an attempt to cow his opponents? ("I'm the expert here, what do you know?") I let arguments stand for themselves but he did not. And BTW if you look at my many posts in other topics you will see I do not engage in personalised attacks.


Syke: you still do not get it. It's not about illnesses, it's about RATES of illnesses, in other words statistics and nothing else. And the only tools we have for determining whether a change has ocurred in rates of illnesses (or road accidents or sales of icecream or anything at all in this universe) are tests of statistical significance. If medical researchers cannot attain this standard then they are incompetent and nothing they produce is worth anything. (They teach how to do these tests to people taking maths as a minor subject in their science degrees, pass or honours, so we we are not talking about Quantum Field Theory.)
Science has progressed by trying to do away with subjective feelings and introducing objective rules that can be followed by everyone. Hence the invention of the idea of statistical significance, to allow any of us to analyse before and after numbers to see if something is going on (among other things). The situation you describe in medical research is a step back into ignorance. As far as I am convcerned you are defending the indefensible.

PaulP

Syke:

One last thing: you talk of the difficulty of inter-disciplinary communication. This does not apply because there is only one discipline in question, statistics. Which is not a part of physics or biology or any other science. When people of different backgrounds use statistics they are supposed to abide by its rules. There are enough communciation problems without introducing another one, especially when it's not that difficult to learn those rules.

GuanYin

Originally posted by PaulP
Syke: you still do not get it. It's not about illnesses, it's about RATES of illnesses, in other words statistics and nothing else. And the only tools we have for determining whether a change has ocurred in rates of illnesses (or road accidents or sales of icecream or anything at all in this universe) are tests of statistical significance. If medical researchers cannot attain this standard then they are incompetent and nothing they produce is worth anything. (They teach how to do these tests to people taking maths as a minor subject in their science degrees, pass or honours, so we we are not talking about Quantum Field Theory.)
Science has progressed by trying to do away with subjective feelings and introducing objective rules that can be followed by everyone. Hence the invention of the idea of statistical significance, to allow any of us to analyse before and after numbers to see if something is going on (among other things). The situation you describe in medical research is a step back into ignorance. As far as I am convcerned you are defending the indefensible.

You brought up statistics not me.

I explained in very simple english that the papers use of the word "significant" was not in reference to statistics. I explained exactly why. I explained why they felt there were problems with the survey. It doesn't take away from the facts put forward by the paper.

I didn't quote the papers statistics. I mentioned where there were statistical rises and where there wasn't.

The journal is there for everyone to see, if you are that annoyed about your ideals being disproved, don't take it out by having a go at me.

GuanYin

Originally posted by PaulP
Syke:

One last thing: you talk of the difficulty of inter-disciplinary communication. This does not apply because there is only one discipline in question, statistics. Which is not a part of physics or biology or any other science. When people of different backgrounds use statistics they are supposed to abide by its rules. There are enough communciation problems without introducing another one, especially when it's not that difficult to learn those rules.

See any number of the above posts which you don't seem to have read properly.
I pointed out that it wasn't a statistical reference several times.

PaulP

Syke:
1) "if you are that annoyed about your ideals being disproved". What ideals and how can they be disproved?


2) "You brought up statistics not me". How can you claim to KNOW that the accident caused increased levels of illness without using statistics? I state that it is ultimately a matter of statistical methodology, once questions about the the accuracy of the figures input into that methodology have been settled. What are you claiming? Unless there are illnesses that could only have been caused by the accident then we have to compare rates of illnesses , in other words statistics.


3) "Whatever you may have learned as a physicist doesn't mean anything in the world of biological and medical sciences. All disciplines have their "ways" which can be attributed to the nature of the discipline."

What I learnt about statistics came from professional statisticians. Of which you claim to be one. Tell me: is the concept of, say, standard deviation different in physics to medicine? Of course not. So why do you, as a medical statistician, not stand up for universal statistical standards in medical research?


4) "I explained in very simple english that the papers use of the word "significant" was not in reference to statistics". Then why mention your expertise in medical statistics which, by this statement, is not relevant? Go back to the beginning. You are trying to convince me that the rates of illnesses increased. This is a statistical question. You cite papers that are statistical analyses but whose results are not statistically significant. Yet you leave in the claim that they are "significant", in some way you have still to define. I started by asking for some papers with statistically significant results so that I could make up my mind. I am still waiting.

Victor

Whoot! Handbags at dawn! :rolleyes:

davros

One would think that people would be treading more softly after the mod steps in and threatens banning.

But no, I still see PaulP trying to tear strips off syke. So, take the rest of the week to cool off. You can post again from next Monday.

williamgrogan

While you are at it, why don't you ban Victor for copyright violation of the eVoting logo? You might get sued.

I'm having an early night, but I will reply to your scurrilous charge that I purposely with malice aforethought insulted the sensitive souls on this thread by quoting a literary giant out of context.

williamgrogan

I strongly refute the allegation that I made “a gratuitously offensive insult to the other side of the debate”.

In fact I was being gratuitously offensive to the organisers of the (non existent) Chernobyl Victims convoy.

These people pull on our heart strings by implying that there are hundreds of thousands of children that are currently being poisoned, were deformed and are in orphanages as a result of the Chernobyl accident. This is not the case. In other words they are dishonest in their manipulation of our pity.

This is precisely the point Oscar Wilde made regarding Dickens and Little Nel.

davros

Yes, but they are sincere people who genuinely want to help others. And there seem to be plenty of children in Belarus that are benefiting from that help.

I could just see people wading in to condemn your laughing at pictures of deformed children and I wanted to nip that in the bud.

Victor

Off topic, but:

Originally posted by williamgrogan
While you are at it, why don't you ban Victor for copyright violation of the eVoting logo? You might get sued.

Well, I'm not aware of any copyright on that material. If there is let them sue me. I'm sure a defence of parody would work.

I would e-mail them, but well from their contact page, they don't seem to be into the whole e-mail thing. They must be luddites or something. Damn the can't even include their extensive nationwide roadshow details

williamgrogan

Yes, but they are sincere people who genuinely want to help others

Isn't that the claim made by all CAM artists?

Victor

Originally posted by williamgrogan
Isn't that the claim made by all CAM artists?

CAM ... Computer Aided Manufacturing?

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=CAM%20
http://www.acronymfinder.com/af-query.asp?p=dict&String=exact&Acronym=CAM

nadir

I havnt read all the posts cause im a bit busy/lazy/whatever.
but i do remeber one thing about this topic.

When I was learning radiation stuffs in college the head of radiation in the physics department (this guy knows his stuff) said that the whole chernobyl thing was blown out of proportion, that in a population sample that large you will find those numbers of deformaties anyway. Now this guy is like a leading expert , and afaik he has no motives behind saying that.

Another thing im sure of is that people generally dont know what they are talkinga bout and its very easy to scaremonger, radiation is something we are all exposed to everyday, i mean we all get 2 millisieverts or so from background radiation, but the body can cope with it easily. Now I dont know what these people we exposed to but we also have to consider how localised this was, I mean its very possible taht the radiation would have been blown off and that some other unfortunate place would have suffered more than the actual area of origon. Anyhow in short I think its totally possible that it was blown out of proportion, but without the hard scientific facts for something like this, then we are all just talking crap really.

williamgrogan

but without the hard scientific facts for something like this, then we are all just talking crap really

we posted the hard scientific fax back early in the post, man



btw ta for your support anyway

williamgrogan

Re C.A.M.

close ....

but it really means Con All Morons or some have suggested Complementary Alternative Medicine.

williamgrogan

I am opposed to energy production by the burning of fossil fuels and the following statement by the United Nations Environmental Protection Agency reinforces my position.

The report, compiled by an international team of experts, says that coal-fired power stations and waste incinerators now account for around 1,500 tons or 70 percent of new, quantified man-made mercury emissions to the atmosphere. The lion's share is now coming from developing countries with emissions from Asia, at 860 tons, the highest.

"As combustion of fossil fuels is increasing in order to meet the growing energy demands of both developing and developed nations, mercury emissions can be expected to increase accordingly in the absence of the deployment of control technologies or the use of alternative energy sources," says the report.

A study of women in the United States, also cited in the new report, has found that about 1 in 12, or just under five million have mercury levels in their bodies above the level considered safe by the United States Environmental Protection Agency.

Just three years ago, the United States Research Council estimated that about 60,000 babies born each year in the U.S. could be at risk of brain damage with possible impacts ranging from learning difficulties to impaired nervous systems. However, based on more recent exposure data published by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, some scientists think the number of at risk babies could be as high as 300,000. Globally the number could run into the millions.

Klaus Toepfer, UNEP's Executive Director, said: "Mercury is a substance that can be transported in the atmosphere and in the oceans around the globe, travelling hundreds and thousands of miles from where it is emitted. It has long been recognised as a health hazardous substance".

These are some of the findings to emerge from the global study of mercury carried out by experts for UNEP. The report is being presented to environment ministers from across the world who are attending UNEP's Governing Council, and will form the basis for political decisions that will set the course for global action on mercury for years to come. The Council is meeting at the organization's headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya, from 3 to 7 February 2003

http://www.unep.org/Documents.Multilingual/Default.asp?DocumentID=284&ArticleID=3204&l=en

How many of the deformed babies in Belarus were deformed because their mother’s or themselves ingested Mercury?

Syke

from the little ive read im having a hard time figuring out who are the skeptics and who are the fanatics.