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Comment by lubonay | Hacker News Reader

Go hang out at Pripyat if you really think it's the fear that gets you. I volunteer as the B group, fearing radiation intensely but staying away from it. We can document whose health deteriorates first!

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"Expert Assessment

Consensus

The mental health impact of Chernobyl is the largest public health problem caused by the accident to date"

-- Health Effects of the Chernobyl Accident, page 95, World Health Organization [1]

But what do they know?

[1] http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/43447/1/9241594179_...

That's with a large scale evacuation, so it says nothing about living in the area. It's like saying Y2K did not cause any major issues so all that effort was pointless. Remember, dealing with probelms alters the outcomes so you can't look at the outcome alone.

Exactly, the cited passage goes on:

The magnitude and scope of the disaster, the size of the affected population, and the long-term consequences make it, by far, the worst industrial disaster on record. Chernobyl unleashed a complex web of events and long-term difficulties, such as massive relocation, loss of economic stability, and long-term threatds to health in current and, possibly, future generations, that resulted in an increased sense of anomie and diminished sense of physical and emotional balance.

You'll note that a large proportion of these are due to the evacuation, and we do not know how much of that was necessary.

In terms of directly attributable health effects, including deaths, it's nowhere near the worst industrial disaster on record. It's a curious claim.

We'll likely never know whether that was due to the evacuation or simply that the risk were overstated. E.g. consider the Bhopal disaster [1] for comparison - 2259 official immediate deaths in Bhopal vs. 56, and nearly 4000 confirmed dead due to the disaster and 16k+ estimated total deaths, vs. a WHO estimate of 4000 eventual shortened lifespans after Chernobyl (e.g. people whose life expectancy over a period of decades is shortened due to increased cancer risks). Bhopal further caused an estimated 558,000 injuries.

For comparison, the Chernobyl exclusion zone used to be home to 120,000 people. Far more people were actually harmed in Bhopal than even lived near Chernobyl.

Chernobyl is only worse than Bhopal on a single measure: It will take longer before the area is fully safe to use again (but much shorter than people initially thought - as mentioned elsewhere, there is already pressure to open it up to more activity, as background radiation is already down to relatively safe levels).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster

> You'll note that a large proportion of these are due to the evacuation, and we do not know how much of that was necessary.

Exactly. The biggest (general-population) health effect was almost certainly overreaction.

You may claim that, but please stop pretending that the section of the report you refer to does the same.

"Expert Assessment

Consensus

The mental health impact of Chernobyl is the largest public health problem caused by the accident to date"

-- Health Effects of the Chernobyl Accident, page 95, World Health Organization [1]

That's the direct quote. But you can continue to pretend/imagine that it says what you want it to say.

That quote does not support your argument. A little above that on page iii it mentions how the mass evacuations, iodine pills, and cleanup effort saved many lives across millions impacted.

You can't save someone's life unless they where first put at risk. So, there where clearly problems now you can talk about the largest outstanding problem after mitigation, but that's different.

> unless they where first put at risk.

Who said that there had been no risk?

> there where clearly problems

Who said there were no problems? I don't see how people turn "A is greater than B" into "B is zero".

If I had written "there was obviously no risk at all from radiation" you might have a point, I but I did not write that and would never write that, because it is clearly ridiculous.

Nothing I said suggested zero anywhere. I have said you can't measure 'with intervention' vs 'without intervention' by only looking at the with intervention outcome. Thus, to support your argument you need to demonstrate what the harm would have been vs what it is.

You keep quoting that sentence, but it doesn't even imply, much less outright say, that the evacuation was "almost certainly overreaction".

Both well justified and poorly justified evacuations come with mental health impacts. If our house burns down while we're in it and we get out in time, the mental health impact would be the largest health concert; that doesn't mean we should stay in it.

You can argue that the Chernobyl evacuation was an overreaction, but not using that paragraph or the enclosing section in that report. Yet you persist in doing so.

I think the best way to say it is. If your house burns down and you get out early then the largest health impact was physiological, that does not mean staying was an option.

People far outside of the exclusion zone where harmed, though generally in minor ways. Further, the improvements in cancer treatment have reduced the number of deaths expected which makes analysis even more difficult.

However, a larger consideration is the economic damage from Chernobyl caused a even more indirect harm. Now, some of this was arguably an overreaction. But again, the cleanup effort is a large part of why the direct harm has been so small. Without that it's a very different situation.

Do you have any other references that point to minimal human health impact associated with the Chernobyl disaster besides the WHO?

> But what do they know?

I'm sure that they know a lot about a lot of things, but that doesn't mean that every report they produce is accurate.

The WHO did not speak of "minimal" human health impacts. In fact, the health impacts were significant.

It's just that those impacts are not primarily due to direct effects radiation. The biggest impact appears to have been over-reaction to the fear of the effects of radiation. Again, those effects due to the overreaction were very real and very significant.

While I'm not trying to play down the consequences of Chernobyl and Fukushima (though they're of vastly different magnitudes), there are some really unique guided tours that head into the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. You can even spend the night at a hotel [i]in[/i] the Zone, luxuriating in the height of Soviet-era hospitality...for the proletariat, anyhow. There are some truly hauntingly beautiful photographs[0] that highlight the very real human cost to the disaster, one that could have been prevented.

I love travel photography, so it's always been something that's high up on my todo list, though I'd prefer to go with friends (hard to understate the awkward silence that follows "Want to visit Chernobyl with me?") at some point. Tours avoid the problematic areas, and there were obviously a ton of workers going in and out to work on the New Safe Containment building recently so it's not like it's a complete dead zone. If you look at this chart of recorded radiation levels[1] at interesting Pripyat/Chernobyl landmarks from 2009, you'll note that while you'll want to stay the hell away from some landmarks, the uSv/hour recordings at the places tours visit are comparable to daily exposure to natural background radiation in various regions or a transatlantic flight.[2][3] Thousands visit each year, though I'd probably suggest screening your tour options carefully.

Of course, I mentioned the plan to my mother back when I was 18 and I still hear about it from her when we disagree nine years later :). Some people just have an odd sense of risk aversion.

0. https://500px.com/search?q=pripyat+ukraine&type=photos&sort=...

1. http://chernobylgallery.com/chernobyl-disaster/radiation-lev...

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(radiation...

3. http://greentourua.com/chernobyl-today-all-you-need-to-know-...

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