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Radioactivity and the Systematic Falsification of Nuclear Risk


Contents
radiation and health
what is actually going on here?
conflict of interest:
health versus nuclear industry promotion


The subordination of the WHO to IAEA is a key part of the systematic falsification of nuclear risk which has been under way ever since Hiroshima. The agreement creates an unacceptable conflict of interest in which the UN organisation concerned with promoting our health has been made subservient to those whose main interest is the expansion of nuclear power. Dissolving the WHO-IAEA agreement is a necessary first step to restoring the WHO's independence to research the true health impacts of ionising radiation and publish its findings.”
Dr. Chris Busby, quoted in “Toxic link: the WHO and the IAEA
by Oliver Tickell, guardian.co.uk, 28 May 2009


radiation and health



A few facts about radiation and health,
by BeyondNuclear.org, 24 Mar 2011


No Immediate Danger? Prognosis for a Radioactive Earth,
talk given by Dr Rosalie Bertell, published in Women and Sustainable Development: a report from Women's forum in Bergen, Norway, 14-15 May 1990


Nuclear Radiation and its Biological Effects,
Part I from No Immediate Danger, Prognosis for a Radioactive Earth,
by Dr Rosalie Bertell, The Book Publishing Company, 1985.


The Free-Radical Fallacy about Ionizing Radiation:
Demonstration That a Popular Claim Is Senseless

by John W. Gofman, M.D., Ph.D., Committee for Nuclear Responsibility, September 1997


"Asleep at the Wheel":
The Special Menace of Inherited Afflictions from Ionizing Radiation

by John W. Gofman, M.D., Ph.D. and Egan O'Connor, Executive Director, Committee for Nuclear Responsibility, Fall 1998



          The fact, so seldom explained by radiation enthusiasts and so often stressed in our publications, is that extra exposure of a population to low-dose radiation creates only a small RISK per individual, but it creates a real RATE (not a “maybe”) of fatal radiation-induced cancer for the POPULATION.
          For example: In 1990, the government-sponsored BEIR Report (p.172) estimated that if the population received an extra 100 milli-rems of dose every year (approximately equivalent to doubling the natural “background” rate), the dose-increment would induce extra cancer fatality in one out of every 400 people per lifetime (details available in Gofman 1995, Pt.3). Per newborn individual, the extra lifetime RISK would be 1 chance in 400—perhaps a “negligible” personal risk in some people's opinion. The same estimate translates into a lifetime RATE of 650,000 extra fatal radiation-induced cancers for a population of 260 million persons (USA). Our own 1990 estimate (Gofman 1990, Table 16-C) is about 7.6 times higher: 4,940,000 extra fatal cancers—1 person in every 53. . . .
          In our own view, it is quite possible that a permanent doubling of the “background” dose of ionizing radiation, worldwide, would very gradually double mankind's burden of inherited afflictions—from mental handicaps to predispositions to emotional disorders, cardio-vascular diseases, cancers, immune-system disorders, and so forth. Such a doubling would be the greatest imaginable crime against humanity.




what is really going on here?


Long-Lived Radionuclides
Are Lethal at the Atomic or Molecular Level

Official scientific and governmental agencies that set standards for radiation safety employ definitions of dose and risk that perpetuate an inaccurate understanding of demonstrable radiation effects that have caused and will continue to cause severe and lethal biological damage to all life as well as the integrity of the planetary gene pool.

The following excerpt is taken from: Steven Starr: “The Implications of The Massive Contamination of Japan With Radioactive Cesium,” Helen Caldicott Foundation Fukushima Symposium, 03-11-13:

The International Commission on Radiological Protection states in this document [Source: ICRP, 2009. Application of the Commission’s Recommendations to the Protection of People Living in Long-term Contaminated Areas After a Nuclear Accident or a Radiation Emergency. ICRP Publication 111. Ann. ICRP 39 (3).] that a whole body activity of 1400 Becquerels is equivalent to an exposure of one-tenth a millisievert per year. In other words, the radiation models used by radiation biologists that convert this level of internal absorbed dose to “effective dose,” do not predict serious health risks from such exposures. In fact they state that it is safe to have 10 times this exposure level.

There is however strong evidence that the ingestion of these levels of so-called “low-dose” radiation are, in fact, particularly injurious to children. Research done by Dr. Yuri Bandazhevsky, and his colleagues and students, in Belarus during the period 1991 through 1999, correlated whole body radiation levels of 10 to 30 Becquerels per kilogram of whole body weight with abnormal heart rhythms and levels of 50 Becquerels per kilogram of body weight with irreversible damage to the tissues of the heart and other vital organs.

One of the key discoveries made by Bandazhevsky was that Cesium-137 bioconcentrates in the endocrine and heart tissues, as well as the pancreas, kidneys and intestines. This goes completely against one of the primary assumptions used by the ICRP to calculate “effective dose” as measured by milliseiverts: that Cesium-137 is uniformly distributed in human tissues.

Let me restate that. The current ICRP methodology is to assume that the absorbed dose is uniformly distributed in human tissues. This is, in fact, not the case.

Essential Reading by Professor Yuri I. Bandazhevsky, M.D.

Dr. Bandazhevsky’s current orginazation, Coordination and Analytical Center “Ecology and Health” presented at: International Solidarity CHERNOBYL

PDF: Radioactive Cesium and the Heart: Pathophisiologic Aspects, New Russian-to-English translation, “The Belrad Institute” 2013

This book is one of a series of the author’s publications on the effects of radioactive elements on the human body. The author analyzes the results of his clinical-laboratory studies on the impact of radioactive cesium [primarily Cs-137] upon cardiac function. The book is intended for a wide range of readers, physicians and scientists who are interested in problems of the influence of incorporated radionuclides on the human body.
from the Preface:
Dr. Bandazhevsky’s groundbreaking research on the effects of radioactive cesium upon the children and people of Belarus is not well known in the United States. This is in large part because the government of Belarus chose to persecute him and suppress his work, which threatened to disrupt their plans to repopulate lands grossly contaminated with radioactive cesium. Bandazhevsky was forced to write this study while under house arrest, awaiting many years of subsequent imprisonment and torture. Government agents had already destroyed many of the archived samples, slides and materials that he and his colleagues and students had accumulated during the nine years he was Rector of the Gomel State Medical Institute of Belarus. However, Bandazhevsky had already published much of the statistical data he had obtained in 4 books: Clinical and experimental aspects of the effects of incorporated radionuclides in the body [Russian and English]. Gomel 1995; Pathophysiology of incorporated radioactivity. Gomel, 1997; Structural and functional effects of radionuclides incorporated into the body, Gomel, 1997. Pathology of incorporated radioactivity, Minsk, 1999, as well as numerous articles in the collection of scientific works of the Gomel State Medical Institute. He used much of this previously published information in conjunction with the slides that he had preserved at his residence, in order to write this study. For purposes of clarity, I have added a section, at the bottom of page 6, which provides more details on the methodology used by Dr. Bandazhevsky to obtain Whole Body Counts and the specific activity of 137Cs (cesium-137). This section on methodology is taken from “Chronic Cs-137 Incorporation in Children’s Organs,” published in Swiss Med Wkly 2003; 133:488-490. Dr. Bandazhevsky was the author, but note that he was in prison at the time, and the 2003 study was compiled by his European colleagues using data that they had obtained from Dr. Bandazhevsky during their visits to the Gomel State Medical Institute during the period 1997- 1999. Dr. Bandazhevsky has recently confirmed to me that that the methodology described in the 2003 study did in fact describe the methodology used during his nine year research recorded in this study.
Steven Starr, March, 2013


PDF: Radioactive Caesium and Heart (pathophisiologic aspects) (Minsk: BELRAD) 2001, 59 pages
Russian language

This book is one from the series of the author’s publications devoted to the effect of radioactive elements upon human organism. Here the author analyzes results of his own clinical and laboratory researchers, considering the studying of the state of cardiac activity in conditions of radioactive caesium influence. The publication is intended for various practitioners, researchers investigating the problems of incorporated radioisotopes’ effect upon the human organism.


PDF: Pathological processes in the organism during incorporation of Radionuclides - Russian only, 2002



PDF: Chronic Cs-137 incorporation in children’s organs, Swiss Medical Weekly. 2003:133(35):488-490

In Belarus’s Gomel region, which was heavily contaminated by fallout from the Chernobyl disaster, we have studied the evolution of the Cs-137 load in the organisms of the rural population, in particular children, since 1990. Children have a higher average burden of Cs-137 compared with that of adults living in the same community.
We measured the Cs-137 levels in organs examined at autopsy. The highest accumulation of Cs-137 was found in the endocrine glands, in par- ticular the thyroid, the adrenals and the pancreas. High levels were also found in the heart, the thymus and the spleen.


PDF: Non-cancerous Medical Conditions in Areas of Belarus Contaminated by Radioactivity from the 1986 Chernobyl Nuclear Accident, with Dr. Galina Bandazhevskaya, Belarus (2009)
Copyright © Yury Bandazhevsky and Galina Bandazhevskaya. All Rights Reserved.



PDF: Deceitful Assessment of the Chernobyl Disaster: ENOUGH!,

Professor Yury Bandajevski, President of The Ecology And Health Center of Kiev, Responds To The Information Which Appears In The Last Assessment Of The United Nations Scientific Committee On The Effects Of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) Published By The Agency REUTERS On September 22, 2010
Reuters article titled: “FACTBOX-Long-term Chernobyl effects lower than feared” - local PDF copy


PDF: Chernobyl: Prospects For The Second Generation, Coordination and Analytical Center “Ecology and Health”, 2015, 33 pages

Demonstration materials contain the results of scientific research by Professor Yu.I. Bandazhevsky, Associate Professor N.F. Dubovaya, Associate Professor G.S. Bandazhevskaya.
 
Conclusions
  1. The results of the instrumental examination give evidence of presence of functional changes in heart function in the majority of children from Polesie and Ivankov districts of Kiev region, Ukraine, detected during a routine medical examination in 2014-2015.
  2. Particular attention should be paid to the health of boys aged 12-17 years, among whom in comparison with other age groups, there were most frequently cases of increased arterial and pulse pressure, abnormalities of heart beat rhythm in the form of bradycardia and early ventricular repolarization syndrome.
  3. Pathologies found in the adolescent period are the basis for the occurrence of serious diseases leading to death in adults.


Our Radioactive Trash Will Last for Eternity

Onkalo - Into Eternity
Complete, annotated transcript of Maria Gilardin's introduction to the film
broadcast on TUC Radio, 12 July 2011


The Journey Our Nuclear Waste Must Make: Into Eternity
Complete, annotated transcript of the interview with film-maker Michael Madsen,
Director of Into Eternity, conducted by Dr. Helen Caldicott
If You Love This Planet, 15 July 2011


Fukushima Into Eternity statement by Michael Madsen, March 2012



Plutonium Life Span






conflict of interest:
health versus nuclear industry promotion

International Conference on Fukushima and Chernobyl “Cover up and play down a disaster”


Toxic link: the WHO and the IAEA
A 50-year-old agreement with the IAEA has effectively gagged the WHO
from telling the truth about the health risks of radiation
by Oliver Tickell, guardian.co.uk, 28 May 2009


Science with a Skew:
The Nuclear Power Industry After Chernobyl and Fukushima

by Gayle Greene, The Asia-Pacific Journal, 2 January 2012


Nuclear Reactor Catastrophe in Japan
– An Open Letter To The World's Environmental Ministers
,
C.G.Weeramantry, Weeramantry International Centre for Peace Education and Research, Sri Lanka, 14 March 2011


How nuclear apologists mislead the world over radiation,
George Monbiot and others at best misinform
and at worst distort evidence of the dangers of atomic energy
by Helen Caldicott, guardian.co.uk, 11 April 2011


Nuclear Disaster and Obama’s Disastrous Response,
by Karl Grossman, CommonDreams.org, 31 March 2011


Japan's New Hibakusha and the Collapse of the Nuclear Power "Safety Myth",
by Japan Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms, 17 March 2011


A world in denial of nuclear risks,
World leaders push for nuclear proliferation,
despite a past plagued with nuclear-related disasters
by Danny Schechter, Al Jazeera English, 23 March 2011


Fukushima. If the health consequences of Chernobyl had been known...,
by Independence for WHO, 22 March 2011


The Hippocratic Vigils
by Independence for WHO, maintained since 26 April 2007



U.S. Nuclear Power Plants - Playing with the Poison Fire
On a radioactive planet all plans for the future will become meaningless.
—Claus Biegert, Initiator of The World Uranium Hearing, 1992


What Next for the WHO and IAEA? Chernobyl, 25 Years Later
By Dr. Janette D. Sherman, MD, Counterpunch, 4 March 2011


Chernobyl: An Unbelievable Failure to Help,
by Dr Rosalie Bertell, International Journal of Health Services, March 2008



For the past 23 years it has been clear that there is a danger greater than nuclear weapons concealed within nuclear power. Emissions from this one reactor exceeded a hundredfold the radioactive contamination of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. No citizen of any country can be assured that he or she can be protected from radioactive contamination. One nuclear reactor can pollute half the globe. Chernobyl fallout covered the entire Northern Hemisphere.
—Introduction, page 1, Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment, by Alexey V. Yablokov, Vassily B. Nesterenko, Alexey V. Nesterenko, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Volume 1181, December 2009, 335 Pages.
“1945-1998” by Isao Hashimoto
A Time-Lapse Map of Every Nuclear Explosion Since 1945

Multimedia artwork
“2053” – This is the number of nuclear explosions conducted in various parts of the globe.*
Profile of the artist: Isao HASHIMOTO
Born in Kumamoto prefecture, Japan in 1959.
Worked for 17 years in financial industry as a foreign exchange dealer. Studied at Department of Arts, Policy and Management of Musashino Art University, Tokyo.
Currently working for Lalique Museum, Hakone, Japan as a curator.
Created artwork series expressing, in the artist's view, “the fear and the folly of nuclear weapons”:
  1. “1945-1998” © 2003
  2. Overkilled” (2007)
  3. The Names of The Experiments” (2006)
About "1945-1998" © 2003
“This piece of work is a bird's eye view of the history by scaling down a month length of time into one second. No letter is used for equal messaging to all viewers without language barrier. The blinking light, sound and the numbers on the world map show when, where and how many experiments each country has conducted. I created this work for the means of an interface to the people who are yet to know of the extremely grave, but present problem of the world.”
Contact the artist:
Should you have any query regarding this artwork, please contact: hashi123ping@amy.hi-ho.nepong.jp

* The number excludes both tests by North Korea (October 2006 and May 2009).

Mirrored from source: http://www.ctbto.org/specials/1945-1998-by-isao-hashimoto/



“I’d like to point out something about the Japanese perception . . . that Japan has no choice but to go the nuclear path. This has been thoroughly inculcated into the Japanese mind. But in fact, what has happened is that people have not been given an opportunity to think about different ways of meeting energy needs. And I think as long as you focus on provision of very large amounts of power and ever-increasing amounts of power, as we saw in [IAEA Director General Yukiya] Amano’s [4 April 2011] speech, then you’ll inevitably find yourself being attracted to nuclear power. Whether or not that’s the best solution, it’s still a mindset. But if you start looking instead at the demand side and thinking of the most efficient ways to deliver the same energy services and putting the incentives in a different way—the incentives are now directed towards maximizing sales of electricity, but instead, if you put the incentives towards the most efficient provision of energy services, then all sorts of different possibilities open up, and you can drastically reduce your energy demand. . . .
        If you listen carefully to Yukiya Amano’s speech, it was all premised on the assumption that there was an ever-increasing demand for energy. And I think it’s just common sense that we cannot have an ever-increasing supply of energy. So, unless you start to look at the physical limits of our planet and think you’re doing things differently, then you’re not going to come up with a solution. What we are pushing for now is to try and convince the people of Japan that there is another way and get through—break through the indoctrination they’ve received over the last 30, 40 years.”
—Philip White, International Liaison Officer at the Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center based in Tokyo, Japan, speaking on DemocracyNow, “U.N. Nuclear Watchdog Says It Will Continue to Push for New Nuclear Power Plants
Despite Growing Global Nuclear Concern
,” 5 Apr 2011





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