Chernobyl

Press, 22 May 1986, Page 12

Chernobyl

Sir, — You have compromised your reporting standards by biased accounts of the Chernobyl accident. A Swedish radiologist said (May 7) that preliminary calculations suggested 80 to 8000 might contract cancer from it. Under the headline “Toll may be high,” you start by saying up to 8000 Europeans might develop cancer. Now even 80 is no joke, but you emphasised the higher extreme of a very tentative estimate. Again today your headline says “Surgeon says 100,000 likely to suffer.” That is untrue. He said "50,000 to 100,000 had some dose which might be of longterm concern.” That means a few dozen will die of cancer as a result. About 99,900 will get away scot-free, except that a quarter of them will die of cancer from other causes such as inhaling diesel exhaust fumes. Why are you alarming us by overemphasising the radiation risk? World figures show that, notwithstanding Chernobyl, hydro-elec-tric power generation kills more people than nuclear power. — Yours, etc., % BRUCE MOON. ' May 20, 1986.

[We must all hope that the most favourable estimates will prevail, including those of our correspondent. If “long-term concern” does not mean that so many will “suffer” at all, there is good reason for satisfaction. We agree, and have said in our leading article, that other forms of power generation have caused more deaths.—Editor.]