from the truth-and-perseverance-opposing-industry-spin dept.
Alexey Yablokov and Chris Busby are biologists whose efforts have been to make people aware of the negative health effects of very low-dose ionizing radiation.
Chris Busby reports via CounterPunch
There will be many obituaries published about Alexey V. Yablokov, the extraordinary Russian scientist, activist, and human being, but I would like to briefly record a few words about the man I knew. And to weep a few tears.
He was a strong [...] friend and fellow fighter for truth, and his recent death on the evening of January 10th means a lot for me--and (though we may [not] know it) for us all on this increasingly contaminated planet.
[...] He, like me, saw the issue of radiation and health as one which was fundamentally a political one, and only secondarily as scientific.
[...] In 1998, [...] Alexey and I [...] with Inge Schmitz-Feuerhake, Alice Stewart, and (later) Molly Scott Cato [...] decided to form an alternative [to ICRP, the International Commission on Radiological Protection]: the European Committee on Radiation Risk (ECRR).
This needed an alternative radiation risk model, and we worked on this over the next five years to create the first ECRR report which was published in 2003 and rose upon the nuclear industry horizon with the brightness of a thousand suns.
[Continues...]
Alexey organised the translation into Russian, and it quickly appeared also in French, Japanese, and Spanish. Alexey suggested we publish a series of books and ECRR reports, and quickly began to put together the first compilation of evidence on Chernobyl effects which we published together in 2006: Chernobyl 20 Years On: Health Effects of the Chernobyl Accident .
[...] In 2009, he came to the Lesvos conference of the ECRR and made a presentation on Chernobyl effects which we published in the Proceedings. Later, we were in Geneva together and stood vigil together outside the World Health organisation with our sandwich boards. It was freezing. We took the message all over the place. Even after he became ill and had various operations, he would struggle along somehow: we were there in East Berlin, talking about Fukushima.
[...] What Alexey, Inge, and I had in common was the realisation that to win this battle we had to act in several domains: in the scientific literature, in the political area, and in the legal arena also. We had to be brave and accept the attacks and the lies spread about us.
We wrote up the science in books and reports and we began publishing in the peer-reviewed literature; we developed the alternative risk model and entered into court cases as experts and finally in my own case as the legal representative. And it worked: between us we have shaken the foundations of the current bogus structure. And I believe we will ultimately win.
I last saw him in Moscow in 2015 at his 80th birthday celebration to which he invited me (and paid my ticket). A sort of vodka-[fueled] scientific congress. The only other English speaker there was Tim Mousseau. The Russian scientists there were so clever. So honest. Such a change from all the time-serving bastards and idiots I meet in the radiation risk community venues like CERRIE [Committee Examining Radiation Risk from Internal Emitters] or more recently the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. We hugged and cried and tossed back the vodka.
But now ... they have all gone. Karl Z Morgan, John Gofman, Ed Radford, Ernest Sternglass, Alice Stewart, Rosalie Bertell, and now Alexey. All my old mates. Where are the young scientists to replace them? Nowhere. It is all brush and spin and jobs now.
So: Goodbye Alexey Vladimirovitch. A brave and powerful presence, a big man in every way. Perhaps the last of the warrior scientists.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 20 2017, @12:54AM
Brain Tumors wood explain all the stoopid trolling round here.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday January 20 2017, @02:53AM
Most of the publicity on Chernobyl has shown how remarkably healthy the ecosystem is. Before anyone goes nuts, well of course the radiation is bad for the environment. Despite lack of publicity on the matter, I'm sure several generations of all animals in the area suffered. The question is - how much did they suffer? But, today, there are healthy populations of just about every kind of animal in the area. How many of them have migrated to the area? How many of them are the descendants of survivors of the disaster?
I watched a documentary on wolverines, for instance. The little devils seem to be thriving! I did note that they don't seem to be as evil and wanton as their American cousins are purported to be.
I discovered Elena Filatova's documentary work some years ago. Tonight, I find references to her, but all the links seem to be dead. She even had her own website, with most of her work on it, but that seems to be gone. Ah well, Youtube has dozens of videos about the Chernobyl area. Anyone interested can type "chernobyl" into a search over there, and pick a video.
I did that minutes ago, and one of the top hits was about wolves. The click-bait image had a sad looking wolf that appeared to be suffering from mange, but I don't have an hour to spare right now to watch that video.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday January 20 2017, @02:58AM
Well, there's the obvious: go live there. Do the experiment yourself. Report back to us on how it works for ya :D
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Friday January 20 2017, @03:26AM
Well - the obvious conclusion is, it's less deadly than we feared it would be.
That doesn't mean it's "safe" to live there.
(Score: 1) by sorokin on Monday January 23 2017, @01:53AM
It means that proximity to humans is more deadly than the radiation in the area. It doesn't mean that radiation isn't harmful.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Friday January 20 2017, @04:31AM
While I wouldn't recommend it, some people never left. They're still there, living on vegetables they grow there themselves.
It's probably fortunate that they were beyond child bearing years when the accident happened.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 20 2017, @10:51AM
The consequences of Chernobyl [alexanderhiggins.com]
.
Wildlife Around Chernobyl Is NOT Plentiful Nor Are The Remaining Animals Healthy [washingtonsblog.com]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Friday January 20 2017, @08:17PM
A 2012 article says:
Scientists found an increase in leg, antennae and wing shape mutations among butterflies collected following the 2011 Fukushima accident.
-- http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19245818 [bbc.co.uk]
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 20 2017, @04:00AM
Tonight, I find references to her, but all the links seem to be dead.
Because she lied about some stuff? http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2004/05/fraud-exposed-and-true-thing.asp [neilgaiman.com]
http://hoaxes.org/weblog/comments/chernobyl_trip [hoaxes.org]
So even if the photos and some of it might be true, people treat the story like a poisoned well.
The radiation is still there and the animals are having higher mutation rates. The animals have high populations because humans aren't around. And no surprise since the radiation isn't high enough to kill most animals that fast. They might end up dying of cancers at a higher rate, it's mostly after they breed so the population goes up.
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/06/science/nature-adapts-to-chernobyl.html [nytimes.com]
Those comparisons have generally shown a lower abundance of birds and rodents in the more radioactive areas.
See also: http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2010/08/20/DNA-of-Chernobyl-animals-studied/UPI-36701282318781/ [upi.com]
Most plants will do fine - they tend to be more decentralized organisms - it doesn't matter if half a tree is filled with tumours, the rest can go on living (you can often chop off part of a plant and grow that part into a new plant elsewhere).
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 20 2017, @07:31AM
The reason Chernobyl is good for the environment is because it drove the humans away. The moral of the story is that our species is worse than radiation.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Friday January 20 2017, @08:09PM
I discovered Elena Filatova's documentary work some years ago. Tonight, I find references to her, but all the links seem to be dead. She even had her own website, with most of her work on it, but that seems to be gone.
I had no difficulty opening one of her pages:
http://www.angelfire.com/extreme4/kiddofspeed/spring2007.html [angelfire.com]
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday January 21 2017, @12:53AM
Thanks. I'm half sure I tried that page yesterday, and it wouldn't load for me. But, I'm only half sure. I clicked your link, and the page opened immediately.
Likewise, youtube links are loading without any noticeable delay today. Yesterday I watched that litle spinning circle go round, and round.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sJldE5TVIw&index=1&list=PLLFw32A1gQu0NoredIOxRGdVc6gJ2GQ-J [youtube.com]
The problem was most likely my own ISP - they are screwed up often.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday January 20 2017, @03:38AM
Can somebody summarize the summary? I wasn't under the impression anyone thought radiation wasn't a bad thing.
Not sure that taking something more seriously than other people who are already taking it seriously exactly qualifies someone for "hero" status.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by caffeine on Friday January 20 2017, @03:54AM
I've read articles disputing the argument that if a lot of radiation is a lot bad, then a little radiation must be a little bad. The logic is we evolved in an environment with background radiation and perhaps some background radiation is healthy.
I've no idea is the idea has any merit.
(Score: 2) by engblom on Friday January 20 2017, @08:08AM
All ionizing radiation is dangerous. Think about shooting a ball against a house wall. One single ball will have less chance to hit a window than let's say 1000 balls against the same wall. In the same way, the more radiation you receive, the bigger chance there is for mutation to happens that cause cancer. This mean there is a chance even for lower doses. If it just hits the wrong cell at the wrong moment, things can go wrong. Stronger doses is just more "balls", making higher probability.
This I write as a parent to a son that been going through Leukemia treatment. This Leukemia he probably got from "safe" doses of radiation from radon in our water. The safety limit is set to 1000 Bq/l. We had 500 Bq/l in the water from our well. As reference, a typical dug well is having around 50 Bq/l. The authorities said that we do not need any radon removing device as we are inside of the limit. Now we have one radon removing device and a lot less trust in what authorities say about radiation safety.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Friday January 20 2017, @12:40PM
Good luck to you, and your son especially.
Yeah, my trust in government has gone waaaaaaaay down over the years.
My wife still thinks Hillary would have made a good President, whereas I'm thinking a revolution is coming because it is all 'same old corruption'.
Have to wait and see if Trump makes America great again, or feeds the pigs some more. So far, I see pigs... Rich pigs.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by rleigh on Friday January 20 2017, @10:14AM
I've read this as well, and I've also done radiation safety training while I was working in a biology lab and been to a few lectures on the subject. All the papers I've read show ionising radiation damage is strictly linear. This is borne out in the statistics for artificial controlled exposure, e.g. the probability of jaw bone cancer is directly proportional to the number of dental x-rays a person has been exposed to.
On the other hand, the body does have repair mechanisms which are activated in response to specific types of damage, which can result in repair or programmed cell death depending upon the nature and severity of the damage. The thinking is that this can be beneficial in fixing or eliminating accumulated damage caused other causes (free radicals, random DNA replication errors etc.) by triggering the repair response.
I don't think we have a definitive answer there. Ionising radiation is dangerous, and from one point of few there is no "safe" level at which it is beneficial; it's all down to probabilities, so it's only safe at low levels from the point of view that you only have a small chance of a serious problem occurring in the remainder of your lifetime. Maybe that's offset by some side benefit, but that's not really clear and it's difficult to test in a controlled and ethical manner; most of the data is from statistical study of the medical history of whole populations, or subsets of populations, which comes with its own caveats.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Friday January 20 2017, @10:31AM
The evidence you cite is not appropriate - i.e. you say the probability of jaw cancer is proportional to the number of short, high dose events. That is completely different to chronic low dose i.e. increase in background radiation. I believe that the effects of ionising radiation are not linear.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 20 2017, @01:45PM
The effects are certainly nonlinear at the bottom end as you would easily see a correlation between incidents of cancer vs the altitude that people live, and you don't. In fact, there is even suggestions that cancer cases goes down with altitude. This goes to the heart of the Linear No-Threshold model of radiation safety, which says there is no threshold dose the body can't handle, which goes against observation as well as our understanding of basic physiology. It is based upon the reasoning that, say, if I ingest 100 liters of water in a day, that will kill me, which means that if I ingest 10 liters a day for 10 days, that will kill me; which means that if I ingest 1 liter of water a day over 100 days, that will also kill me. Clearly there is a threshold where the body can handle the water. It sounds silly when you talk about water, but it is scary when you talk about radiation because radiation is scary.
(Score: 2) by rleigh on Friday January 20 2017, @01:50PM
That's was not the conclusion drawn in the radiation training and lectures I attended. A single absorption event has a certain probability for causing damage. As you increase the event frequency, the damage frequency will increase proportionately. It's absolutely complicated by the frequency and intensity of exposure, but you've still absorbed the same quantity irrespective of the pattern. The ability to *repair* that damage *may* differ depending upon the dosage, but even then the science is definitely not completely settled. Chronic exposure is still accumulating all the damage; it won't all be detected and fixed by any means. It was thought that the body could tolerate chronic exposure; we all tolerate background of varying amounts; but the last time I was doing the training stuff for all this, that was considered less reliable than previously.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 20 2017, @03:11PM
It depends not on the total dose, but the type and manner in which it is applied. For instance, you can drink plutonium, called by some "the most toxic substance in the world [isu.edu]", without really suffering any problems because it isn't taken up by the body and it will pass right out of you. In fact, you can make it into a chunk (but don't make it too big!) and carry it around in your hand. However, you wouldn't want to make a powder out of it and mix and snort it with your blow. Health Physics and Radiation Safety only concern themselves with total dose and assume that there is no safe level of radiation. This is very unrealistic, but it is easy to calculate and it keeps the lawyers happy and in business.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Friday January 20 2017, @08:29PM
The hypothesis is called "radiation hormesis"; the Wikipedia article on it mentions the term "radiation homeostasis" which I don't remember seeing anywhere else.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 20 2017, @03:41AM
Counterpunch seems shady as fuck.
No disclosure on their funding sources.
When I browse the articles there I find hysterical radical hyperbole and guilt by association that doesn't hold up under even the lightest critical thought.
I'd be pissed if we started running brietbart stories, I don't think we should be running counterpunch stories either. If the reported facts are legit then there will be other more credible sources sources for them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 20 2017, @11:19AM
Now some specifics would be good.
What -exactly- is wrong with THIS story?
...and while we've got you on the line, perhaps you can tell us how CounterPunch is exactly like Breitbart. [google.com]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 20 2017, @03:03PM
I have no idea what is wrong with this story because I am not an expert on the topic and you know what? NEITHER ARE YOU.
If the last year has taught us anything, it is that the source matters.
If you think a counterpunch story is legit then do the legwork to find coverage from a more reputable source before you submit rather than relying on everybody else to fack-check your work for you. Liberals are the group where critical thinking and intellectual discipline are cultural values. Don't drag us down.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 20 2017, @05:39PM
i have found that my intellectual conservative friends often think of good and smart things, but then do what their boss tells them instead.
in turn, i have been accused of rocking the boat with radical thoughts that differ from expectations when I express them. unfortunately, the silent support of my peers isn't an election process.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 20 2017, @08:50PM
Oh, that couldn't be more obvious.
the source matters
The guy who wrote the article, *is* an expert in this field.
He has the education, credentials, experience, and specific knowledge to comment on Chernobyl.
As for your red-herring comparison to Breitbart, I find that Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting does honest critiques of media sources.
Breitbart is mentioned by them hundreds of times [google.com]--always in a negative critical light.
OTOH, when CounterPunch is mentioned by FAIR, [google.com] it tends to be cited as a useful source of information.
...or as the target of a discredited Reactionary outfit like PropOrNot . [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [fair.org]
Liberals are the group
...and there you go again, off on a tangent, painting with a broad brush.
If you have a SPECIFIC critique, make it.
If you don't have anything SPECIFIC, then STFU.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Friday January 20 2017, @08:31AM
An alternatite title could have been:
"Alexey V. Yablokov, a co-founder of Greenpeace Russia dies at 83"
Quite impressive obituary - and despite me trusting UNSCEAR and IAEA over him his writings will be missed.