Effect of the accident on human health
Timeliness, completeness and inconsistency of official information about the crash gave birth to a set of independent interpretations. Sometimes the victims of the tragedy consider not only the citizens who died immediately after the accident, but residents of surrounding areas who came to the May Day demonstration, not knowing about the accident. In this calculation, the Chernobyl catastrophe is much greater than the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on the number of victims.
Greenpeace and the International Organization of Physicians Against Nuclear War, "argue that the accident only the liquidators died tens of thousands of people in Europe recorded 10 000 cases of deformities in newborns, 10 000 cases of thyroid cancer and is expected to have 50 000.
There is an opposite point of view, referring to 29 reported deaths from radiation sickness as a result of the accident (the station staff and firefighters, has taken the first blow).
The scatter in the official estimates of smaller, although the number of victims of the Chernobyl accident can be determined only approximately. Also killed plant workers and firefighters, they include sick soldiers and civilians involved in the aftermath of the accident, and residents of areas affected by radioactive contamination. Determining which part of the disease was the result of an accident - a very difficult task for medicine and statistics. It is believed that the majority of deaths associated with exposure to radiation, has been or will cause cancer.
The Chernobyl Forum - an organization operating under the auspices of the UN, including its organizations such as IAEA and WHO - in 2005 published an extensive report, which analyzed numerous scientific studies of the effect of factors related to the accident, the health of the liquidators and the population. The findings in this report, as well as less detailed review of "Chernobyl Legacy", published by the same organization, significantly different from the above estimates. The number of possible victims to date, and in the next decade is estimated at several thousand. It is emphasized that this is an estimate of the order, because of the very small radiation doses received by most people, the effects of radiation exposure is very difficult to distinguish the random fluctuations of morbidity and mortality and other factors not directly related to radiation. Such factors include, for example, lowering the standard of living after the Soviet collapse, which led to an overall increase in mortality and reduced life expectancy in the three most affected countries, as well as the changing age composition of the population in some heavily polluted areas (of young people left).
It is also noted that a somewhat higher incidence among men who have not participated directly in the liquidation of the accident, and relocated from the exclusion zone in other places not directly connected with the exposure (in these categories indicated a somewhat increased incidence of cardiovascular, metabolic disorders, nerve disease and other diseases not caused by irradiation) and induce stress associated with the fact of displacement, loss of property, social problems, fear of radiation.
Given the large number of people living in areas affected by radioactive contamination, even small differences in the risk of the disease can lead to large differences in the assessment of the expected number of cases. Greenpeace and other NGOs insist on the need to consider the impact of the accident on human health and in other countries. Even lower doses of radiation make it difficult to obtain statistically reliable results and make such estimates inaccurate.