Don't underestimate harm from radiation

Regarding "Reckless comparisons" [Opinion, April 24], the role that radiation exposure from Chernobyl played in the staggering health impact on people in three Soviet republics and many countries in the Northern Hemisphere is still being grossly minimized by the nuclear establishment and, by proxy, in this article by Alexander Sich.

This has everything to do with protecting nuclear power and nothing to do with valid, objective science. Soviet researchers were intimidated and silenced in their efforts to provide data on health effects. Secrecy and falsification of records were the rule.

The official United Nations agency report, in its projections of cancers and other health impacts from Chernobyl, gives credence only to acute radiation sickness and high-dose exposures, while relegating the lifetime commitment from cumulative low-dose exposures of hundreds of millions of people to the dustbin of statistical "uncertainties in the predictions." [The United Nations set the number of victims at about 4,000]. But low-dose exposures count, because there is no safe dose of radiation.

There is a wide gap between official estimates and those of independent sources. The late eminent nuclear scientist John W. Gofman, estimated Chernobyl would cause 475,000 premature cancer deaths over a century. A 2009 book by three Soviet scientists, "Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment," is based on 5,000 published scientific studies and articles. It estimated that, by 2004, the radiation had caused 985,000 deaths, most from cancer, as well as leukemias and a multiplicity of other adverse health consequences.

Because Chernobyl cancers will be spread out over a century among a half-billion people in affected areas, even a half-million such cancer deaths will not be identifiable among other normally occurring cancers. What could better suit the naysayers?

In the unfolding catastrophe at Fukushima, what we have been hearing from the Japanese government and the power company about "safe" levels of radiation released does not bode well for transparent and nonpoliticized information. We may well be wary of official future estimates that predict trivial health consequences.

Miriam Goodman, Huntington

Editor's note: The writer runs an educational project called Mid-Island Radiation Alert.