You can go to hospitals anywhere in the world and hear exactly the same stories. Kids get cancer. It sucks, but it's a fact of life. Is there any evidence that these cancers were caused by Chernobyl?
- Between 1970 and 2001 thyroid cancer incidence rates in Belarus increased from 0.4 per 100 000 to 3.5 per 100 000 among males (+775%) and from 0.8 per 100 000 to 16.2 per 100 000 among females (+1925%).
- The relative increases in areas with ‘higher exposure’ from the Chernobyl disaster exceeded those in ‘lower exposure’ areas with marked increases in thyroid cancer incidence rate ratios among both genders and in all age groups.
- The largest increases were observed among people from ‘higher exposure’ areas ages 0-14 yr at time of diagnosis, suggesting that a high prevalence of pre-existing iodine deficiency, in combination with unique susceptibility among younger people, might have contributed to potential carcinogenic exposures to the thyroid.
- The magnitude of increases observed is remarkable given the relatively limited time interval since Chernobyl ...
From: http://www.ceecis.org/iodine/04a_consequences/05_nuclear/Che...
[Edit: formatting]
I'd really like that we put things into perspective a bit.
[1] http://seer.cancer.gov/publications/childhood/adolescents.pd...
[1] For example, heres a documentary on this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fCCVU4y7oE Note that I don't know how accurate this particular documentary is and I haven't watched it all, but I have seen others with similar content. WARNING: don't watch if you're not prepared to see severely deformed children. Its not very nice at all, really :(