Greenpeace: Chernobyl Toll Grossly Underestimated

Posted on April 26, 2006

The BBC reports that Greenpeace believes the Chernobyl disaster has had a much more serious impact and higher death toll than the UN's figures of 9,000 dead. A Greenpeace report suggests the Chernobyl death toll will be much higher: from 93,000 to 200,000 deaths resulting from the 1986 nuclear accident.

But Greenpeace says in a report released on Tuesday that recent studies estimate that the actual number of such deaths will be 93,000.
Stressing that there is a problem with diagnosis, it adds that other illnesses could take the toll to 200,000.
"Our problem is that there is no accepted methodology to calculate the numbers of people who might have died from such diseases," Greenpeace campaigner Jan van de Putte told Reuters news agency.
"The only methodology that is accepted is for calculating fatal cancers."

Greenpeace argues that people will get sick in other ways than just cancer and focusing on cancer limits the impact of the nuclear disaster.

But in its report, Greenpeace suggests there will be 270,000 cases of cancer alone attributable to Chernobyl fallout, and that 93,000 of these will probably be fatal.
Blake Lee-Harwood, campaigns director at Greenpeace, told the BBC that cancer was likely to be the cause of less than half of the final fatalities.
"We're also looking at intestinal problems, heart and circulation problems, respiratory problems, endocrine problems, and particularly effects on the immune system," he told the BBC's World Today programme.

A PDF-file for the Greenpeace Chernobyl study can be found here