FOR SOME, JUST A NUMBERS GAME

What Chernobyl Wrought: Photos By Paul Fusco

By Elizabeth C.

AMID WORLD PANIC OVER JAPAN'S WORSENING NUCLEAR RADIATION CRISIS NOW COMES ASSURANCE THAT "fear of Japan's nuclear crisis far exceeds actual risks,"' according to the Christian Science Monitor.

Here's quoting directly from an article published by the newspaper today: "After more than 20 years of extensive study, there is no consistent evidence of increased birth defects, leukemia, or most other radiation-related diseases," journalist Peter Hessler wrote in a 2010 article for The New Yorker. He said the only public epidemic consists of high rates of cancer in children, who tend to be more sensitive to radiation."

The article goes on to say that "even those incidences of cancer could have been prevented, scientists say, if the Soviet government had warned locals against feeding contaminated milk to their children."

Well, that's reassuring. All we have to worry about is the curse of cancer on the next generation to be born.

I guess if you're calculating damages over decades a couple of thousand cancer deaths don't matter.

To be fair, the CSM piece attempts to put the potential deadly consequences of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in context compared to past disasters such as the 1984 Union Carbide leak of methyl isocyanate in Bhopal, India that killed about 20,000 people. But if you're the loved one of one of the "heroic" employees forced into service against the disaster, or a parent of a child born after Chernobyl, my guess is you feel differently about some faraway observer's risk assessment.

Photographer Paul Fusco spent two months in the late 1990s documenting the scars of radiation on the chldren and residents of Chernobyl and the pictures aren't pretty. His black and white photos depict children with monster-like limbs and tumors the size of second heads and vacant stares.

I guess the risk of nuclear radiation is worth the rewards just so long as someone else's children pay the price.

Credit:PaulFusco/MediaStorm

Credit: Paul Fusco/MediaStorm