Chernobyl and the Mortality Crisis in Eastern Europe and the Former USSR

Description

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the mortality crisis which affected Eastern Europe and the republics of the former USSR at the time of the transition to a market economy was arguably the major peacetime health crisis of recent decades. Chernobyl and the Mortality Crisis in Eastern Europe and the Old USSR discusses the importance of that crisis, surprisingly underplayed in the scientific literature, and presents evidence suggesting a potential role of the Chernobyl disaster among the causes contributing to it. A combined discussion of Chernobyl & the mortality crisis of the transition An examination of the spikes in mortality in the late 1980s &1990s A review of the decreasingly controversial evidence on the harmful effects of low-dose ionizing radiation Acknowledgements About the author Preface Contents Abbreviations Chapter 1 Introduction Chapter 2 Chernobyl — The nuclear disaster Chapter 3 Chernobyl and the timing of the mortality crisis Chapter 4 Birth rates and sex ratios after Chernobyl Chapter 5 Soviet and post-Soviet cover-up Chapter 6 Effects of the radioactive fallout — From early evaluations to the Chernobyl Forum Chapter 7 Health effects of ionizing radiation — How knowledge grew out of secrecy Chapter 8 Effects of low-dose radiation — The LNT model — Hormesis Chapter 9 Conflicting results of investigations on exposures to low-dose ionizing radiation Chapter 10 Thyroid cancer caused by the Chernobyl fallout Chapter 11 Post-Chernobyl non-thyroid malignancies and other health effects Chapter 12 Mortality effects of fallout from nuclear tests Chapter 13 Conclusion Appendix A Units for measurement of ionizing radiation Appendix B Gender issues Appendix C Data Tables References Index