Title: Chernobyl’s Legacy: Health, Environmental and Socio-Economic Impacts and Recommendations to the Governments of Belarus, the Russian Federation and Ukraine
Author:
Reference: The Chernobyl Forum: 2003–2005, Second revised version
Keywords: health effects, socio-economic impacts, environment, Russia, Belarus, Ukraine
Abstract: The accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1986 was the most severe in the history of the nuclear power industry, causing a huge release of radionuclides over large areas of Belarus, Ukraine and the Russian Federation. Now, 20 years later, UN Agencies and representatives of the three countries have reviewed the health, environmental and socio-economic consequences.
Reference: Український медичний часопис (Ukrainian Medical Magazine), 2001
Keywords: Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Metabolic Syndrome X, liquidators, the Chernobyl accident, channelopathy, membranopathy, effects of ionising radiation
Abstract: Frequency, the trends of development, and outcomes of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) and Metabolic Syndrome X (MSX) in clean-up workers of the consequences of the Chernobyl accident (liquidators) were studied as well as an attempt was made for consideration of a community of these syndromes pathogenesis in the light of the current data in radiobiology and radiation medicine. During 1990–2001 there were examined randomly selected 367 liquidators of 1986–1987. It was established that CFS frequency significantly (p<0,001) decreased (from 65,5% in 1990–1995 to 10,5% in 1996–2001) and MSX frequency significantly (p<0,001) increased (from 15 to 48,2%). CFS and MSX are considered to be the stages of another neuropsychiatric and physical pathology development, and CFS can transform towards MSX. A significant role of channelopathy (including radiation-induced) in the mechanisms of the development of CFS and MSX is discussed. Mitochondrial genome disorders together with changes of transmembrane ionic transport could be the basis of CFS and MSX. Radiation-induced damage of mitochondrial DNA in post-mitotic tissues with low proliferation activity may be a one of the basis of the effects of low doses concerning an increase of non-cancer morbidity and mortality in the Chernobyl accident survivors. Radiation effects launch at the sub-membrane, membrane and post-membrane levels could further integrate in the systemic and intrasystemic levels that, finally, together with genetic predisposition and exposure to other promoter factors lead towards the development of non-specific radiation syndromes, in particular, CFS and MSX.(Full text in Russian on web)
Abstract: On March 11, 2011 came the horrific earthquake and tsunami in Japan, and the escalating crisis at the tsunami-damaged Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station. As the Fukushima accident unfolded and the extent of radioactive contamination was revealed (?!), the world wondered: Is this another Chernobyl? A month after the earthquake the Japanese government classified the accident as a Category 7 disaster, the same as Chernobyl. No doubt comparisons with Chernobyl will be elaborated, negotiated, challenged, and rejected as the situation develops at Fukushima Daiichi. For now, the renewed awareness of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident–which coincides with the event’s 25th “anniversary”–provides an opportunity to ponder the multiple kinds of fallout the disaster produced: health, environmental, social, cultural, and political.
Title: A semiotic analysis of the newspaper coverage of Chernobyl in the United States, the Soviet Union, and Finland
Author: REBECCA KAUFMANN / HENRI BROMS
Reference: Semiotica. Volume 70, Issue 1-2, Pages 27–48, October 2009
doi: 10.1515/semi.1988.70.1-2.27
Keywords: news, media coverage, U.S.A, Soviet Union, Finland
Abstract: As a disaster, Chernobyl invaded the minds of the world’s citizens unlike any other. More than a volcano, a stock market crash, or a student riot, Chernobyl received news coverage second only to that received by out and out war. As the co-Director of the Center for War, Peace, and the News Media adduced: Ά nuclear accident is … a unique news event. Nothing else, short of a nuclear war, resembles it’. The American, Soviet, and Finnish press approached the uniqueness of the Chernobyl disaster in very different ways. While the American and Soviet news coverage lost perspective of what was truly at issue — a tragic nuclear accident — the Finnish news coverage threw few stones and tried to report the facts.
Author: L.L. Zdorenko, K.N. Loganovsky
Reference: Український медичний часопис (Ukrainian Medical Magazine), 2002
Keywords: mental working capacity, mental fitness, clean-up workers, Chernobyl accident, acute radiation sickness, organic mental disorders
Abstract: Mental working capacity in the remote period after the Chernobyl accident in liquidators with organic mental disorders (n=106), including patients who had been diagnosed with acute radiation sickness (n=48), was assessed with clinical, psychometric and psychophysiological methods. Mental working capacity is significantly reduced due to motivation disturbances as a result of personality, emotional-volitional and cognitive disorders against the background of organic brain damage of combined genesis. The level of mental working capacity in the remote period of acute radiation sickness is determined with its severity degree (36%), social-economic factors (27%), psychopathology (15%), somatoneurological pathology (13%) and age (9%). Social-economic factors are the main causes defining the reduction of mental working capacity in the examined liquidators (60%). It is necessary to create the state system of social-psychological rehabilitation for optimisation of mental working capacity in persons exposed as a result of the Chernobyl accident.
Author: T.S. Mel’nikova, V.N. Krasnov, M.M. Yurkin et al.
Reference: Журн. невропатол. и психиатр. им. С.С. Корсакова. (journal of neuropathology and psychiatry named after S.S. Korsakov), 2010
Keywords: liquidators of Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant accident, psychoorganic syndrome, EEG coherence analysis
Abstarct: The group of liquidators of Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant accident (n=170) with nonpsychotic mental disorders of exogenicorganic origin was studied. Patients were stratified into five groups on the basis of dominating symptoms in different stages of disorders: group 1 included patients with the prevalence of asthenic symptoms (n=104); group 2 — with the prevalence of autonomous disorders (n=37); group 3 — with the marked neurotic-like symptom complex (n=10); group 4 — with depressive symptoms (n=10); group 5 — with disturbances of cognitive function. The control group included 150 healthy people. Recording and mapping of coherence (COH) of the brain electrical activity was conducted using the apparatus-software complex for topographic mapping of brain electrical activity NEURO-CM (Russia) with the bandwidth from 0 to 40 Hz and the time constant of 0,3 sec. The EEG record was carried out monopolar from symmetrical cortical zones (10—20% scheme). Changes of COH were characterized by staging in patients compared to the controls. In the initial stage of disease, the integrative links were decreased in the temporal cortical zones of the left hemisphere. The reduction of functional activity in temporal-central cortical zones was found that might be the consequence of mesodiencephalic dysfunction. In the later stages, temporal zones of the right hemisphere were mostly affected. The parallel reinforcement of functional activity of occipital zones, in particular, the increase of “long links” with frontal areas, was noted in the overall formation of the psychoorganic syndrome. This phenomenon may be considered as a compensatory mechanism when the phylogenetically older cortical zones, which are more resistant to pathological changes, become leaders in the realization of integrative brain activity during the development of a pathological state.
Reference: Журнал неврологии и психиатрии им.С.С.Корсакова (journal of neurology and psychiatry named after S.S. Korsakov), 2007
Keywords: neurology, psychiatry
Abstract: Difficulties and errors in estimating the neurological disorder in a person, exposed to radiation, is often found in practices. This is proven by objective facts and caused by insufficient knowledge of some researchers. Cases of defects of education, of people, on the wide range of natural radiation and human body’s content of radioactive elements are found, with which the effects of technogenic impacts must be compared.
We recall that the nervous system has no specific receptors for reactions, on which the quantity of absorbed energy, in the human body, of ionizing radiation could be judged.
Reference: Медико-биологические и социально-психологические проблемы безопасности в чрезвычайных ситуациях. (Medico-biological and socio-psychological problems of safety in emergencies ), 2009
Keywords: psychotherapy, clinical psychology,
Abstract: Study of internal disease picture has become one of the most important directions of present-day research in the field of psychotherapy and clinical psychology. The patients survived thyroid cancer surgery are referred to a risk group because of a wide spectrum of psychopathological disorders. Within this study we used Behterev institute’s personality questionnaire (LOBY) in 90 patients survived thyroid cancer surgery. The study showed considerable decrease in quality of life of the given patients in comparison with the control group. The most expressed changes were observed in physical, psycho-emotional and social domains. This study allows of timely revealing the problems of psychological and psychopathological level in the given cohort of patients and of improving the existing and developing innovative programs of psychological help.
Title: Worse Than Radiation and 7 Odd Chernobyl Stories
Author: Sergii Mirnyi. Ed. Frank Williams, trans. Igor Ilyin, Alexander Kalinichenko, Sergii Mirnyi, Frank Williams, and Victor Yevmenov
Reference: Budapest: Bogar Kiado, 2001. 77 pp
Keywords: Chernobyl, stories, novel, liquidators
Abstract: In the days, weeks, and months following the Chernobyl nuclear disaster on April 26, 1986, an untold number of civilians and military personnel suffered radiation poisoning and died trying to seal Chernobyl’s collapsed fourth reactor and decontaminate the surrounding countryside. Among those who witnessed this haphazard and dangerous clean-up effort firsthand was writer, scientist, and former platoon commander Sergii Mirnyi. His short novel, Worse Than Radiation, is a two-part account of one reconnaissance platoon’s efforts to meticulously document the radioactive fallout near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Unlike the narrative of heroic liquidators featured in state propaganda, it is a tale not of sacrifice and selfless deeds but of daily routine that offers glimpses into the life of workers in “the zone“.
