Something else is causing the drift in the numbers."Dr Parkin's evidence
Something else is php causing the drift in the numbers."Dr Parkin's evidence does article 22 not rule out an increase in leukaemia in children from Chernobyl: medical opinion predicts article that 22 a five per view cent increase might be expected in the most affected country, Belarus, although the statistics modules are so shaky that it is hard php c1 22 to be sure that one has spotted the trend. In the UK, in article 30 years, there have been something like 154 cases It's possible the radiation alone doesn't explain it. Possibly there are genetic factors, or it may be modules a modules article view article matter of iodine deficiency which is increasing the childen's susceptibility to radiation-induced cancer. Elisabeth Cardis, view head of the programme on radiation and cancer at the International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, says: "In Belarus there have been about 400 cases view in five years article in a article population of 2 million children. php c1 22 But there are other worries, c1 notably a significant and unexpected increase in thyroid cancer. Instances article of deformity and suffering among children c1 in the contaminated area, such as that c1 featured in June in the Network modules article view article First documentary Igor - Child modules of Chernobyl, 22 are family php tragedies, php sure enough.
But they are also, according Dr Baverstock, who has worked on childhood disease in Belarus for three years, occurring there at rates which are normal not merely for that country, but for Europe as a whole. There is no evidence that there has been an increase in deformities or any other genetically-influenced diseases in children born anywhere after the Chernobyl accident. The Finns took the most contaminated fifth of Finnish children and reported that the excess risk of leukaemia (itself one of the most sensitive indicators) was "not significantly different from zero".We should, however, certainly be worried about children within the contaminated zones. In cities such as Kiev, Minsk and Moscow, the annual radiation dose from the accident is equivalent to about a month's stay in Cornwall. The wider, non-Soviet, northern hemisphere suffered about one-third of the radiation fall-out from the Chernobyl disaster, and the British Medical Journal has carried a report by Finnish researchers into the effects on one of the most affected Western European populations - their own.
Dr Keith Baverstock of the World Health Organisation made this point when he wrote a wounded letter to the Times this summer; he talked of misinformation leading to "psychosocial effects which are already diminishing the quality of life and well-being of millions of people and are even leading to illness and premature death."For almost everyone outside the zones described as contaminated, the effects of Chernobyl are negligible. This especially matters when a peasant population, starved of information for generations, finds itself the victim not only of the ultimate technological disaster but also of worldwide - and newly-liberated local - media which can't be bothered to get beyond the drama of "the horror of it all". And you may find yourself spending money fighting radiation when you could help them far more directly."Unesco has set up centres in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine to try to help people understand what is happening to their health and land. If you over- emphasise the risks from radiation, you worry people unnecessarily and disrupt their lifestyles unnecessarily. But, says Mrs Morrey: "It can do more harm than good to get things out of perspective. According to Mrs Morrey, such contamination "has been reduced by changing farming methods, for example by applying chemicals to the soil, or growing crops which don't take up so much radioactivity. A lot of the land is still worked under collective farms, so it is possible to organise it in this way.