Reading from and report on Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment. The extensive section on health effects in this book offers a whole new view of the consequences of radiation induced disease. Yes, there are cancers to specific organs, many thyroid cancers caused by Iodine 131 and 129 but there are also diseases that affect body systems such as the whole endocrine system, not just the thyroid, or the immune system, the respiratory and the reproductive systems.
Also a brief explanation of "half life" "hot spots" and why background radiation is different from radiation from nuclear processes.
Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment, was compiled by Alexey Yablokov, member of the Russian Academy of Science, and Vassily Nesterenko, former director of the Belarussian Nuclear Center.
Yablokov and Nesterenko wrote a synopsis of the over 1,000 titles and more than 5,000 printed and internet publications that reflect the impact of radiation not just on the health of human beings but on the whole ecosystem. They compiled research on rivers and lakes, the soils and the grains and vegetables growing there, wild and domestic animals, birds, fish, fungi, bacteria, viruses, trees, mushrooms, and berries, - a literature that shows that they were all affected, in varying degrees, but without exception.
UN agencies and writers who say that we all have lived with radiation from sun and soil since time immemorial do not take into account that we, as part of creation, had 1 to 2 million years to evolve under that radiation. And most of the 200 plus radioactive isotopes from nuclear power,including plutonium, are entirely new isotopes, results of the man made splitting of atoms, our collective bodies have only known them since August 1945.
Unexpected hot spots and the movement of radio-nuclides through the environment present additional dangers to human beings - especially those who still live in contaminated areas. The risks are even greater when the radio-nuclides are inhaled or eaten on milk or vegetables, fish or meat and lodge in the body and irradiate it from the inside as so-called "internal emitters".
This part two of a series of readings. This segment deals with the diseases caused by Chernobyl radiation
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