The 2000 NPT Review Conference (RevCon)
14 April - 19 May 2000, New York

Presentations By Non-Governmental 
Organizations (NGOs)

Public Health and Environment as the Victims of the Nuclear Age
Speaker: Prof. Alexey V. Yablokov, Social Ecological Union

Mr. Chairman and Distinguished Delegates,

Thank you for the opportunity to address the Year 2000 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference.

NGOs have presented the UN with views on the health and environmental effects of the nuclear weapons industry (Makhijani, 1998; see also Robbins et al.,1991). But each year gives us a deeper understanding of the dangerous and even dreadful consequences for public health and environment of nuclear weapons production, testing (including underground so called peaceful nuclear explosions) and with the nuclear fuel cycle.

Part I. Consequences of the Nuclear Age for Public Health

1. Under current nuclear industry practice, statistics on radiation-caused illness and radiation protection are inadequate.

A. Many types of damage have been (deliberately or mistakenly) omitted from the official estimations.

"Statistics are the people with the tears wiped away" stated one of the Rongelap people of the Republic of the Marshall Islands, who "hosted" the United States Bikini Nuclear testing in the 1950s.

Under IAEA's criteria damage is not counted if:

- a radiation-caused cancer is not fatal ;

- a cancer is initiated by another carcinogen, but accelerated or promoted by exposure to radiation;

- an auto-immune disease or any non-cancer is caused by radiation;

- radiation-damaged embryos or fetuses which result in miscarriage or stillbirth, congenital blindness, deafness and many other birth defects are not counted;

- causing the genetic predisposition to breast cancer or heart disease does not count since it is not a "serious genetic disease" in the Mendelian sense; and

- Even if radiation causes lung cancer, it does not count if the person smokes- in fact whenever there is a possibility of another cause, radiation is not blamed.

In addition, radiation doses are calculated by averaging the radiation received in one part or organ - for instance when radio-iodine concentrates in the thyroid - over the whole body. This trick of arbitrarily diluting the dose guarantees that the 100mSv cut-off point is never reached.

"In order to estimate the real victims of the nuclear industry [as opposed to those figures enumerated by the ICRP, IAEA and other nuclear apologists] I will take the customary risk estimates, indicate their probable range of error, and then extend the definition to cover related events not recognized as detriments' by the regulators. For example, while the nuclear regulators only take fatal cancers into consideration as 'detriments' by the regulators, others, especially those who endure a non-fatal cancer may find their suffering equally worthy of consideration. And limiting genetic effects to live born offspring does not wipe away the tears of a family that has endured a spontaneous miscarriage or stillbirth." - Rosalie Bertell, 1999. Victims of the Nuclear Age. "The Ecologist", Volume 29, No. 7, pp. 408 -411.

B. The nuclear industry uses the wrong methodology for risk estimation. The official risk estimation is fundamentally erroneous not only because it neglects (or even avoids) some important consequences. It also mistakenly compares the risk from everyday normal activities (having well-known local limited consequences) with the risk from rare and unusual events such as nuclear testing or the Chernobyl catastrophe (having wide and unpredictable consequences (Ivanov, Chamyanov, 1998, Belyaev, 1996). As a result of the miscalculation, stamp collection appears to pose higher risk to health than the nuclear industry.

C. Individual variability of radiosensitivity is ignored. Solid Russian data for some mammals and for Chernobyl' liquidators indicates that existing dose regulations (based on average radio-sensitivity rather than individual variable radio-sensitivity) do not protect about 30-40% of humankind (Yablokov, 1997).

D. The politics of the World Health Organization in connection with radiation studies are unacceptable. Many of above-mentioned miscalculations became possible because under a 1959 agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the World Health Organisation (WHO) cannot publish anything against the nuclear industry (see Attachment 1).

2. New estimation of humankind' health damage from anthropogenic radionuclides.

There are shocking new estimations of the real possible scale of the man-made radionuclides impact on world public health. Below are a few examples.

A. Embryo and fetus losses to stillbirths and miscarriages.

After the detonation of a hydrogen bomb at the Bikini Atoll in 1954 the women of Rongelap Atoll experienced about five years of sterility. As they regained their fertility, they experienced faulty pregnancies, miscarriages and stillbirths.

The visible elevation of the stillbirth in some countries in the 1960s correlate with the level of Cesium and Strontium from Nuclear tests (Fig.1)

(Fig.1. from Busby (1995) after Whyte (1992) with the first day mortality, neonathal mortality and stillbirth rates for United States, 1940-1980.)

Chernobyl statistics show a rising rate of miscarriages and stillbirths in all the polluted countries.

"Causing an unwanted attack on someone's person or reproductive capacity is a violation of human rights. Such damage can be rated for importance, but it should not be arbitrarily ignored." (Bertell, 1999).

Although not officially accounted for, an estimated 500 million embryos and fetuses would have been lost as stillbirths and miscarriages due to radiation exposure from nuclear tests and several radioactive catastrophes like Chernobyl, South Ural (Kyshtym), Three Mile Island (see Fig after White, 1992; Bertell, 1999).

B. Neonatal (0-28 days) mortality

Today we have an explanation for the high level of newborn mortality during atmospheric nuclear testing times (Whyte, 1992, Bramhall, 1997). My estimates show about 5 million newborns were lost from 1956 to 1972 (in the USA alone there were about 128,000) as a result of additional neonatal mortality onnected with nuclear tests.

C. Genetic damage

The UN Scientific Committee on the effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) and the Committee on Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation (BEIR) both agree that a population of one million live births exposed to 100 Person Sieverts will result in one to three "serious" genetic damage effects to offspring.

The more realistic (and conservative) estimation is at least 10 serious genetic effects to be the number for exposed offspring (Bertell, 1999), or even several times more (Shevchenko, 1998 and others).

The total immediate genetic damage to humankind cause by the nuclear industry is not less than 235 millions genetic effects during second half of the twentieth century (Bertell, 1999). During coming generations these defects will be multiplied.

D. Mental retardation in children exposed to radiation in uteri

There is a decline in the mental abilities of children exposed to very small doses during 5-15 weeks of pregnancy (Yarmonenko, 1988 and other). Radiation kills some brain cells, causing both an underdeveloped brain (microcephaly) and mental retardation. For the individual child, the BEIR Committee (1990) estimates that a dose in uteri of 100 mSv can cause a range of mental problems (from poor school performance to severe mental retardation).

Chernobyl data indicates that the dose for damage is tens of times lower. Reconstruction of the damage based on Chernobyl data from Russia, Ukraine and Belorus indicate that over 50% of newborns have had mental problems on territories with density of radioactive pollution above 5 Ci per km2 (about 7 mSv/year). This gives us a rough estimate of up to 5 million people with radioactive-induced mental problems born on the territories polluted after atmospheric tests (Polynesia, Kazachstan, South Siberia, Altay, Russian Arctic, Inner Mongolia, and more).

E. The fatal and non-fatal cancer

In 1991, the International Commission for Radiation Protection (ICRP) concluded that the projected lifetime risk of fatal cancer for members of the population exposed to whole-body radiation at a low dose rate was between seven and 11 excess fatal cancers. If we extend these estimates to non-fatal cancers estimates show 16 fatal and non-fatal cancers (36 if counting non-fatal skin cancers) for one million exposed to 100 Person Sieverts (Bertell, 1999).

The global population from industrial nuclear activities, including weapons testing has lead to nearly 376 million all kinds cancers (Bertell, 1999).

F. Teratogenic effects (fetal malformation)

Irradiation can lead to some 25 congenital visible anomalies including skull deformities, cleft palate, spina bifida, clubfeet, genital deformities, growth retardation, and more.

Nuclear weapons testing has lead to nearly 587 millions persons globally with some fetal malformation (Bertell, 1999).

G. Deterioration of the nuclear industry workers' health

There are more and more wide and serious consequences for personal health connected with production of nuclear weaponry. During the last years discoveries were made here about previously falsified data regarding the level of workers' irradiation. Now in the USA and in Russia data is available on some very serious level of illnesses and morbidity of the "atomic people". (In Russia alone there are about two million such people. See Attachment 2.)

To summarize risk estimates for the global population from industrial nuclear activities, including weapons testing in the fifties, sixties and early seventies:

500 million stillbirth and miscarriages
5 million neonatal mortality
376 million cancers,
235 million genetic effects;
587 million teratogenic effects;
5 million with mental retardation

These statistics show that data from the ICRP and IAEA massively underestimate the real cost of nuclear programs.

According to Andrey Sacharov's old estimation : one kiloton of atmospheric nuclear blast causes nearly 50,000 deaths in coming generations. It means that 266 Megaton from more than five hundreds atmospheric N-tests (Robbins et al.,1991) will results 1 330 millions people up today and in coming generations.

The latest estimation shows that up to 1,200 million people have been killed, maimed or diseased by the nuclear industry to date (Bertell, 1999).

Meanwhile, electricity production from nuclear plants between 1943 and 2000 may have led to another million victims of the nuclear industry a year, of which as many as one-fifth will have been premature cancer deaths. In the coming century this carnage would continue with more than 10 million (Bertell, 1999).

All demographic studies 50 or 40 years ago predicted up to 8-9 billions people to the year 2000. But in reality we have now about 6.5 billion. We should not rule out the possibility that the deadly impact of the nuclear industry caused this situation.

During the last four decades the real consequences of the nuclear industry only became worse. We do not have any sign that that tendency will change. It means that in near future we will discover much more unpleasant and disturbing information on the nuclear industry than we have today. An industry which is killing and maiming this growing number of innocent people – and all in the name of "benefiting" or "securing" society – is unacceptable.

Part II. Consequences of the Nuclear Age for the Environment

The effects of the entire nuclear industry on the environment include the following:

A. "Global" and "eternal" radionuclides

The nuclear industry produces radionuclides of a "global" nature (globally distributed such as Krypton-85, Carbon-14) and of an "eternal" nature (existing thousands or even millions of years such as plutonium, radio-Iodine, Americium). They enter ecosystems and inevitably produce additional mutations in all living beings including viruses and microorganisms.

Modern science is not able to predict all negative impacts of such massive alien interventions into biosphere.

B. River and ocean pollution

Radioactive waste originating in plutonium factories in Russian, USA, Great Britain and France intensively polluted all surrounding water bodies including the rivers Techa, Tobol, Tom, Ob', Enysey in Siberia, Colorado River in North America etc. As a result radioactive pollution now exists in the Arctic, Atlantic, and Pacific Oceans.

Huge amounts of radioactive materials have been dumped into the North Atlantic, Arctic and North Pacific. There has never been a full and comprehensive radio-inventory of the all anthropogenic sources of Ocean pollution (including the results of underwater nuclear tests in the North Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, accidents with nuclear weapons and lost nuclear bombs, sunken submarines and other vessels with radioactive materials; and falling satellites with RTG's, etc.).

Liquid radionuclide discharge from reprocessing plants in Sellafield (GB) and La Haag (France) have polluted all the North Atlantic and were even detected in Arctic water. (There would certainly be similar data for the Colorado River and Pacific Ocean in the USA , and for Japan, India, Taiwan, and others.)

In the coming years we will be facing serious additional sources of radio-pollution in the Ocean from the Floating Nuclear Power Plants now under construction in Russia (Kuznetsov et al., 2000).

Up to ten percent of all Russian territories, and comparable territories in the US, now have radioactive pollution from the nuclear industry, including nuclear testing, uranium mining, reprocessing, incidents and catastrophes like Chernobyl and Three Mile Island.

Some territories have been polluted as a result of accidents with nuclear weapons (eg, Thule in Greenland, Palomares in Spain).

In Russia, Kazachstan, Ukraine, and Tadjikistan there are hundreds of places polluted by so-called peaceful underground nuclear explosions. Sometimes this pollution creates problems with water supplies, as in the Irkutsk region (Eastern Siberia), Yakut-Sacha Republic, and Astrakhan.

C. Underground nuclear pollution

Several billions Curies of the liquid radio-wastes (equal to several dozen cases of Chernobyl) have been introduced into the underground in Russia and the USA near plutonium plants (South Ural, Western and Eastern Iberia). It is a real problem for the drinking water supply for surrounding territories for many hundreds or even thousands of years.

D. Genetic instability

Genetic instability of populations resulting from radio-pollution is a new threat to Living Nature. As a result of irradiation, after tens of generations, the genetic systems of the natural populations (its genofund) become unstable. This phenomenon was discovered only a few years ago, and geneticists do not understand it enough. But it does indicate that after many generations there are some genetic aftershocks" from irradiation.

E. Additional potential negative impacts of nuclear activities to health and environment

1. Radio-carbon (14C) global impact

There are unexplained data regarding the decrease in the rate of forest growth beginning from the end of 1950s throughout the Globe. This coincides with the global rise of the radio-carbon (14 C) level mostly connected with weaponry. The data is scarce but this could mean that climate changes are connected with the nuclear industry.

2. Radio-krypton (85Kr) global impact.

The level of Krypton-85 (which mostly originated from reprocessing plants) is now increased millions of times. In the 1980s there were calculations showing some increase of electro-transmission of the atmosphere, multiplying thunderstorms, typhoons, cyclones etc. (See Fig. 2).

(Fig.2. Growing scale of damage from natural catastrophes (hurricanes, cyclones, etc). After Financial Times (28 April 2000) data.)

3. Earthquake initiation by underground nuclear explosions

After each underground nuclear exposures there are hundreds aftershocks - small earthquakes sometimes hundreds kilometers away. (Comsole, Nikolaev, 1994.) But it looks like there may also be slow year-long waves caused by the underground tests that initiate the real earthquakes.

4. Depleted Uranium weaponry consequences

The US and GB are producing depleted uranium (DU) munitions which they used during the Persian Gulf war and Kosovo crisis. DU is a byproduct of the uranium enrichment process. There are serious concerns about its long-term toxic effects. Examples include the sickness of Gulf War veterans who inhaled small particles of ceramic uranium which stayed in their lungs for more than two years, and in their bodies for more than eight years, irradiating and damaging cells in a particular part of the body.

Part III. RECOMMENDATIONS

Recommendations that would address the concerns discussed above include the following:

To call upon nuclear countries to open all classified materials connected with human health and radiation exposure in China, France, Russia, Kazakhstan, USA, GB and other countries;

To support independent investigation of Chernobyl and other radiation catastrophes, with attention to the consequences for population and environmental health;

To support an independent inventory (and investigate the real consequences) of the world-wide radio-pollution of the ocean (including lost nuclear weaponry, sunken nuclear reactors with spent nuclear fuel etc);

To support independent geological and hydrological studies of the consequences of the underground liquid radio-wastes depositories in Russia, France and USA;

To support independent epidemiological analysis of the health situation in the wind direction around nuclear power plants in the populated areas in North America and Europe;

To stop any reprocessing of the spent nuclear fuel;

To stop the export and import of spent nuclear fuel and hold every country with nuclear reactors accountable for the consequences of its activities;

To prohibit depleted uranium munitions;

To amend the Agreement between the IAEA and the WH0 (Res. WHA12-40 of 28 May 1959) to make all health studies independent of pro-nuclear pressure.

Speaker: Prof. Alexey Yablokov, International Socio-Ecological Union, and Center for Russian Environmental Policy, Moscow, Russia

(Russia, Moscow, 117808, Vavilov street 26, Fax (+7) 095-952-80-19; E-mail: yablokov@glasnet.ru)

Convener: Ms. Merav Datan, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

Selected literature

Belyev S.T. (Ed.). 1996. Ecological risk estimation with connection to radioactive pollution Russian Federation. Russian Scientific Center

'Kurchatov Institute", Research Report # 5.1.cb, p.157

Bertell. R. 1999. Victims of the Nuclear Age. "The Ecologist", Volume 29, No. 7, pp. 408 -411

Bramhall R. (Ed.). 1997. The Health Effect of Low Level Radiation. Proc. Symp. held at the House of Common, London, April 24th, 1996. Green Audit Wales Ltd., Aberystwyth, p.146

Busby Ch. 1995. The Wings of Death. Nuclear Pollution and Human Health. Green Audit (Wales)Ltd., Aberystwyth, IX p.340+

Comsole R., Nikolaev A. 1994 (Eds.). Earthquakes induced by underground nuclear explosions/ Environmental and Ecological Problems. Springer, Berlin,XII p.453+

Ivanov E. A., Chamyanov L.P. 1998. Acceptable probability and scale by the nuclear power plants' heavy accident. Nuclear Energy , vol. 64, #2, pp. 1-7 - 113 (in Russian)

Legasov V.A., Kuz'min I.I., Tchernoplectov A.N. 1984. Energetics inpact on climate. Rep. USSR Academy of Science, seria."Atmosphere and Ocean Physics" , vol. 20, # 11, cc.1089 - 1103 (in Russian).

Kuznetsov V.M., Yablokov A.V., Desyatov V.M., Nikitin A.K., Forofontov I.V. 2000. Russian Floating Nuclear power plants: threat to Arctic, World Ocean and Non-proliferation. Programme on Nuclear and Radiation Safety, Greenpeace-Russia and Center for Russian Environmental policy, Moscow, p. 64 (in Russian).

Makhijani A. 1998. Health and Environmental Effects of Nuclear Weapons Production and Other Aspects of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle. NGO Presentation to the 1998 Non-Proliferation Treaty PrepCom.

Nussbaum R.H. 1998. The linear no-treshold dose-effect relation: is it relevant to radiation protection regulation? Medical Physics, vol. 25, # 3, pp. 291 - 299.

Robbins A., Makhijani A., Yih K. 1991. Radioactive Heaven and Earth. The health and environmental effects of nuclear weaponns testings in, on, and above the Earth. The Apex press, N.Y., XIII p.193+

Stewart A. 2000. The role of epidemiology in the detection of harmful effects of radiation. Environmental Health Perspectives, vol. 108, # 2, pp. 93 - 96.

Yablokov A. V. .1997. Nuclear Mythology. The ecologist's note on Nuclear Industry. Moscow, "Nauka" Publ., 272 p. (in Russian)

Yablokov A.V. 1998. Problems in ecology and radiation safety. Medical Radiology and Radiation Safety, Vol.43, #1, pp. 24 -29 (in Russian , English Summary)

Yarmonenko S.P. 1988. Radiobiology man and animals. Moscow, p. 424 (in Russian).