Ahora lo vuelvo a leer: las predicciones de las consecuencias del accidente de Chernobil, que liberó 400 veces más radiactividad que la bomba de Hiroshima, NO se hicieron realidad (por suerte).
¿Quiere decir que hay que hacer de cuenta que en Japón no pasa nada, aún si no es Chernobil? Por supuesto que no. Pero es mejor mantener la cabeza lo más fría posible y no caer en tremendismos:
It turns out that two decades after the fact, the death toll had not reached the tens of thousands that were predicted. In fact, fewer than 50 deaths could be directly attributable to radiation from the disaster, almost all of them among rescue workers who had been exposed to massive amounts of radiation on the disaster site at the time of the fire and its immediate aftermath. In addition, nine children in the area died of thyroid cancer that is thought to have been caused by radioactive contamination, but even among the nearby population, there was neither evidence of decreased fertility nor of congenital malformations that could be attributed to radiation exposure.
Any loss of life, particularly among children, is tragic. But clearly the mass causalities that were almost universally predicted – not just by the newshounds, but by the many “experts” who commented at the time – have not materialized. “By and large,” the report concludes, “we have not found profound negative health impacts to the rest of the population in surrounding areas, nor have we found widespread contamination that would continue to pose a substantial threat to human health…”
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En primer lugar, hay que desconfiar de esas cifras, ya que Chernobyl ocurrió en la ex URSS, y ya sabemos cómo son los regímenes totalitarios con la información, sobre todo aquella que muestra sus fracasos (Tovarich Morenovich, Yndek...).En 2ndo lugar, tal vez haya habido 50 muertos al comienzo, pero muchos después murieron gradualmente de cáncer.
ReplyDeletePeter, el estudio lo hizo la ONU, aunque no sea mucho más de confiar que la ex Unión Soviética:
ReplyDeleteIn 2006, 20 years after the accident, a group of eight UN agencies, including the International Atomic Energy Agency and the World Health Organization, assessed the damage in a study incorporating the work of hundreds of scientists and health experts from around the world.