Controversy Over Human Health Effects
The majority of premature deaths caused by Chernobyl are expected to be the result of cancers and other diseases induced by radiation in the decades after the event. This will be the result of a large population (some studies have considered the entire population of Europe) exposed to relatively low doses of radiation increasing the risk of cancer across that population. Interpretations of the current health state of exposed populations vary. Therefore, estimates of the ultimate human impact of the disaster have relied on numerical models of the effects of radiation on health. Furthermore, the effects of low-level radiation on human health are not well understood, and so the models used, notably the linear no threshold model, are open to question.
Given these factors, studies of Chernobyl's health effects have come up with different conclusions and are the subject of scientific and political controversy. The following section presents some of the major studies on this topic.
Read more about this topic: Chernobyl Disaster Effects
Famous quotes containing the words controversy, human, health and/or effects:
“Ours was a highly activist administration, with a lot of controversy involved ... but I’m not sure that it would be inconsistent with my own political nature to do it differently if I had it to do all over again.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“If the head is lost, all that perishes is the individual; if the balls are lost, all of human nature perishes.”
—François Rabelais (1494–1553)
“Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar, but is a stab at the health of human society.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Trade and commerce, if they were not made of India-rubber, would never manage to bounce over the obstacles which legislators are continually putting in their way; and, if one were to judge these men wholly by the effects of their actions and not partly by their intentions, they would deserve to be classed and punished with those mischievous persons who put obstructions on the railroads.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)