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Relevant: TIL that after the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident, an estimated 150,000 unnecessary abortions occurred worldwide from women afraid of radiation mutat

by TMWNN 3y ago

Relevant: TIL that after the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident, an estimated 150,000 unnecessary abortions occurred worldwide from women afraid of radiation mutations. There is no evidence whatsoever of any increase in birth defects; not even in Belarus and Ukraine, the closest to Chernobyl. <https://np.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/6q3b2c/til_that_after_the_1986_chernobyl_nuclear/ https://np.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/6q3b2c/til_th...> I've read of similar (non-)findings after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Basically, there is no evidence of any long-term cancer or birth defect increase among survivors. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki#Post-attack_casualties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_a...>

red_trumpet 3y ago
What? The section "Cancer increases" from your Wikipedia link is pretty clear: > Almost all cases of leukemia over the following 50 years were in people exposed to more than 1Gy. > the RERF estimates that, from 1950 to 2000, 46 percent of leukemia deaths [...] were likely due to radiation from the bombs or some other post-attack city effects
NegativeLatency 3y ago
I'd still prefer not to get nuked
LargoLasskhyfv 3y ago
There are other relevant findings Significant increase in trisomy 21 in Berlin nine months after the Chernobyl reactor accident: temporal correlation or causal relation? https://www.bmj.com/content/309/6948/158 https://www.bmj.com/content/309/6948/158 That's for West-Berlin, at that time the GDR(East-Germany) also accounted for that, and found similarly elevated case numbers in that time-frame. But I can't find those, anymore. (Or don't want to, too much hassle, just a piece of personal memory, probably lost in the bitrot of the web) Hassle: Evidence for an increase in trisomy 21 (Down syndrome) in Europe after the Chernobyl reactor accident https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/gepi.20662 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/gepi.20662 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22162022/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22162022/ edit: maybe /r isn't such a good place to learn? The Chernobyl accident, congenital anomalies and other reproductive outcomes https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8516187/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8516187/
itishappy 3y ago
I worry that this is incomplete information. For example, the Wikipedia article linked shows tallies totaling <10k recorded abortions from Chernobyl in neighboring nations. This would mean that nearly all of them would have had to occur in Belarus and Ukraine, which did not report numbers. Where did the 150000 figure come from, in that case? (I'm not the only one to raise this question, see the references for that figure.) Similarly, while there seems to be no evidence of a long-term increase in birth defects, we do not have data on the number of miscarriages at the time, which would surely be a factor when deciding on an abortion. Same with Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Finally, Chernobyl does show measurable increases in thyroid cancer, even though mortality is low. Hiroshima and Nagasaki show excess leukemia deaths too.

by TMWNN 3y ago

red_trumpet 3y ago

What? The section "Cancer increases" from your Wikipedia link is pretty clear: > Almost all cases of leukemia over the following 50 years were in people exposed to more than 1Gy. > the RERF estimates that, from 1950 to 2000, 46 percent of leukemia deaths [...] were likely due to radiation from the bombs or some other post-attack city effects

NegativeLatency 3y ago

I'd still prefer not to get nuked

LargoLasskhyfv 3y ago

There are other relevant findings Significant increase in trisomy 21 in Berlin nine months after the Chernobyl reactor accident: temporal correlation or causal relation? https://www.bmj.com/content/309/6948/158 https://www.bmj.com/content/309/6948/158 That's for West-Berlin, at that time the GDR(East-Germany) also accounted for that, and found similarly elevated case numbers in that time-frame. But I can't find those, anymore. (Or don't want to, too much hassle, just a piece of personal memory, probably lost in the bitrot of the web) Hassle: Evidence for an increase in trisomy 21 (Down syndrome) in Europe after the Chernobyl reactor accident https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/gepi.20662 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/gepi.20662 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22162022/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22162022/ edit: maybe /r isn't such a good place to learn? The Chernobyl accident, congenital anomalies and other reproductive outcomes https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8516187/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8516187/

itishappy 3y ago

I worry that this is incomplete information. For example, the Wikipedia article linked shows tallies totaling <10k recorded abortions from Chernobyl in neighboring nations. This would mean that nearly all of them would have had to occur in Belarus and Ukraine, which did not report numbers. Where did the 150000 figure come from, in that case? (I'm not the only one to raise this question, see the references for that figure.) Similarly, while there seems to be no evidence of a long-term increase in birth defects, we do not have data on the number of miscarriages at the time, which would surely be a factor when deciding on an abortion. Same with Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Finally, Chernobyl does show measurable increases in thyroid cancer, even though mortality is low. Hiroshima and Nagasaki show excess leukemia deaths too.