Comment by trhway | Hacker News Reader

Comment by trhway | Hacker News Reader

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the reports you're referring to are very docile to say the least.

"Otherwise, the team of international experts found no evidence for any increases in the incidence of leukemia and cancer among affected residents."

Except that according to official numbers Belarus, which after the explosion was right down the wind from it, has overall 1.5 times higher cancer rates than Russia or Ukraine have (Russia and Ukraine have the same rate) with some cancer rates being 2x-3x in the Gomel and Mogilev region - the regions right next to the Chernobyl. Such cancer picture is a new development compare to pre-Chernobyl years.

>It would be interesting to know if those "unusual cancers" were in some part a result of radionuclide exposure from Chernobyl or the result of other factors.

Anybody is welcome to suggest such "other factors" which would explain the overall rate increase after Chernobyl with the distribution of rate so that it clearly increases in the regions closer to Chernobyl, while these factors must also be Belarus specific compare to Russia and Ukraine.

But at the same time, radiation and exposure is more nuanced than when and where an event happened that might coincide with some later generalised health effects. Not all radiation is the same and radiation exposure does not always lead to negative health effects. Cancers occurring in a geo-specific region in correlation to an event don't point to one source.

The radionuclides expelled from Chernobyl are known and traceable, not being found in nature they can be detected easily. Knowing their decay chain over time and, later, the bioaccumulation of those isotopes (based on how people will come in to contact with them) you can start to figure out how tissues that bioaccumulate or come into contact with an alpha source could react.

What I am saying is, it's important to understand that its not just about 'radiation' may equal 'cancers'. We know how to understand this deeper than that, on how to measure and calculate health effects based on the specific isotopes and their related exposures on tissues, primarily internally — because alpha decay has the highest energy but is easily absorbed by paper or the outer epidermis, to do damage it has to be in close proximity to sensitive tissues. So its important to stick to those more calculable and verifiable hypothesis rather than broad 'radiation' and 'cancer' labels.

The Belarus officials like to play with the numbers to get money from different foreign organizations. I'm not saying there are no health implication from radiation fallout in these regions but x2 sounds like statistics are used to drive someone's agenda. Instead if blaming drinking and smoking (and trying to solve the societal ailments that are causing that) they blame radiation, because it brings them money.

you can google it yourself. NCBI has a bunch of works on Belarus situation. If anything, real situation coming from people sounds even more gloom than official numbers.

I specifically mentioned Russia and Ukraine because such factors like drinking, smoking, food, genetics, lifestyle/habbits are very similar across all 3 countries and thus can't explain those post-Chernobyl appeared high cancer rates in Belarus.

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