By Brian Carnell

Wednesday, June 26, 2002

A British statistician created a fresh headline grabbing health issue when he told New Scientist that birth defects and infant mortality in Great Britain increased between 1986 and 1989. The cause? According to statistician John Urquhart, radiation from the Chernobyl accident is behind the increase.

There is just one minor problem with that possibility -- although some Chernobyl radiation did reach Great Britain, it did not reach the five regions that Urquhart claims suffered from increased birth defects and infant mortality.

Moreover, studies in countries such as Germany, Hungary and the Ukraine which did receive Chernobyl radiation have found no evidence of any increased infant mortality attributable to the nuclear accident.

Dr. Michael Clark from the National Radiological Protection Board told the BBC that Urquhart's claim that Great Britain received a dose of radiation 40 percent as large as the Ukraine did is "not true" (in fact it is downright absurd). Clark suggested that, "These results [the claimed increased birth defects and infant mortality] need to be looked at again by a professional epidemiologist to confirm the findings."

Somehow, I suspect Urquhart's thesis will disappear when the light of peer review is shined on it.

Source:

Chernobyl scare dismissed by experts. The BBC, June 26, 2002.

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