Twenty Years After Chernobyl: Implications for Radiation Health Risk Control

Abstract

We surveyed the major health outcomes observed in the general population exposed to the Chernobyl accident. In contrast to the predictions made by Western scientists soon after the accident, the health effects noted up to now in the general population around Chernobyl are markedly contrasted with those ascertained in atomic bomb survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, indicating that dose and dose rate of radiation resulting from the accident were probably much lower than those of the atomic bomb radiation. A remarkable increase in childhood thyroid cancer was noted in Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine. The incidence of thyroid cancer in Belarus suggested that people exposed to the Chernobyl accident in their childhood would still be at high risk of thyroid diseases, including cancer. Thyroid cancer in children (aged 0–14 years at diagnosis) began to significantly increase about 4 years after the accident, reached a peak around 10 years after the accident, then began to regress to the level recorded before the accident, whereas that in adolescents (aged 15–19 years at diagnosis) showed a time trend similar to that in children with about a 5-year lag, and in young adults (20–24 years at diagnosis) the incidence was seemingly still increasing. If the former USSR government had disclosed the accident immediately after the occurrence and had taken appropriate measures, the aforementioned victims would have been markedly fewer in number. The most common health outcome of the Chernobyl accident observed so far in the general population is mental health issues, as in the case of the Three Mile Island accident. One of the key points we should learn from the Chernobyl accident is the importance of radiation health risk control.