Chernobyl disaster linked to higher rate of infant mortality in Britain
The debate over the health effects of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Britain reopens today with research which suggests that infant deaths were higher in areas where rain fell as the plume of fallout passed overhead.
A study by the epidemiologist John Urquhart, to be presented at a conference at City Hall in London marking the 20th anniversary of the disaster, suggests that infant deaths may have risen by 11 per cent between 1986 and 1989 in those areas compared with 4 per cent in other areas, a correlation that Mr Urquhart describes as very significant
"This new study shows that
"This new study shows that the infant mortality trend, which was otherwise downwards, rose for a period of four years in England and Wales after Chernobyl. The results based on such a large population suggest that the effect of radioactive fallout could be two orders of magnitude greater than previously suspected."
Radiation only kills you once
You cannot die of cancer if you have already died of a heart attack.
http://www.euradcom.org/2011/ecrr2010.pdf
2010 Recommendations of the European Committee on Radiation Risk (ECRR)
The Health Effects of Exposure to Low Doses of Ionizing Radiation - Regulators' Edition
Edited by Chris Busby with Rosalie Bertell, Inge Schmitz-Feuerhake, Molly Scott Cato and Alexey Yablokov
7.5 Estimating the risk to health
The health consequences of exposure to ionising radiation follow damage to somatic cells and germ cells and thus involve almost all illnesses.
7.6 Detriment
Since loss of quality of life also subsumes deaths from causes other than cancer, a focus on radiation cancer epidemiology may give incorrect results due to confounding causes of death. You cannot die of cancer if you have already died of a heart attack.
7.7 ICRP models for the risk of cancer
For reasons which it does not elaborate, the ICRP assumes that there is always a latency period between exposure and clinical expression and assumes further that there is a linear relationship between the cancer yield and exposure.
7.8 Stochastic effects in progeny: heritable damage
Apart from cancer, which is modelled as a result of somatic cell damage, the ICRP also recognises that damage to germ cells (mutation and chromosomal aberrations) may be communicated to offspring. This may manifest itself as hereditary disorders in the descendants of exposed individuals.
7.9 Effects of exposure in utero and other effects
The Oxford Survey data of Alice Stewart showed a 40% increase in cancer in children who received a 10mSv X-ray dose in utero. This data has now been accepted as defining an in utero risk for external photon radiation of 40 per Sv (Wakeford and Little 2003, CERRIE 2004, 2004a). For the internal exposures to Chernobyl fallout and employing a meta-analysis of 4 countries in Europe and addressing infant leukemia this value is at least 160 times too low,
infant death
How many babies die on the airplane between San Francisco and New York?
Well, if millions of infants
Well, if millions of infants take thousands of flights between San Francisco and New York in a short period of time some of them would die. Really, do people even read what the airplane analogy means?