On 02/06/2013 21:19, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 02/06/13 18:43, Nightjar wrote:
On 02/06/2013 16:17, RayL12 wrote:
...
And so it should be brought to the public. It was the same with
Chernobyl. It was concluded that life around the exploded plant was
actually thriving. That, the only evidence of casualties of fallout was
a small increase in Thyroid cancer victims.
...

One report pointed out that those appeared sooner than would normally
be expected from radiation exposure and postulated that part, possibly
a significant part, of the apparent increase might be due to increased
surveillance and detection.

Colin Bignell

I think thyroid cancer due to I-131 is almost instant in disease terms.

It still takes time for the cancer to grow to a detectable size.
Presumably the point was that some of the cancers detected were more
advanced than they should have been had they been due to the Chernobyl
accident. Exposure to radioactive iodine is not the only cause of
thyroid cancer. In the UK the a lifetime risk of developing thyroid
cancer is 1.7 per 100,000 population for males and 4.7 per 100,000 for
females.

There is no real doubt that the massive doses of I 131 did cause a lot
of thyroid cancers, which equally could have been prevented by issuing
iodine pills as was done instantly at Fukushima.

Indeed.

Colin Bignell