Chernobyl damaged health, says study

People who cleaned up after the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl have an increased incidence of cardiovascular and gastrointestinal disease and cancers of the stomach and lung, according to the first epidemiological study of the incident. They seem not to have an increased risk of leukaemia. “It is as if they are suffering from accelerated aging,” said Dr Alexei Nikiforov, director of the Russian Centre of Ecological Medicine, at a recent international meeting on radiological risk in Paris. “They have roughly the same diseases as anybody else, but the diseases occur with higher frequency and in a more acute manner.”

The term “liquidators” is used to describe the 500 000 to 600 000 …