Talk:Deaths due to the Chernobyl disaster

missing sources

The "Deaths due to the Chernobyl disaster" page is dreadful and does not have a meaningful number for the number of deaths, world organisations estimated only 4000 deaths and were criticised for the number being biased and too low. DELETE IT or merge some of it elsewhere. Kie 2015

Ummm, perhaps that's because there is no universally agreed upon number, even by experts? You have read the comments here explaining how difficult it is to determine the causes of deaths? Does that mean we are to leave the rest of posterity ignorant of the issues?

As for "dreadful", get down to examples and/or essay fixes if that's what you think it needs.

Also, a tip: instead of signing your comment in your own inimitable way, use four tilde characters; that will leave ways to communicate with you on your talk page, provide a time stamp - don't forget that "posterity" mentioned above.  :) SkoreKeep (talk) 00:07, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

The death toll total from this list doesn't agree with the official count, and many of these individuals aren't sourced properly. I'm going to give an editor some time to clean this up before I delete any of the unsourced material. Thanks. Fell Gleaming^(talk) 19:32, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

If other editors feel this article should more properly include those who survived Chernobyl, they should nominate it for renaming. I myself don't see the value of such an article. How exactly do we define a "survivor"? Where do we draw the line? 600,000 people were evacuated, and received at least a very minor dose. Do we include them also? Fell Gleaming^(talk) 00:17, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Whoever was in the plant or in its significant vicinity at the moment it went kaboom and couple hours before and after potentially deserves a mention. Same for the first responders. There are several official counts, depending who is or is not included. Names of the survivors are important to locate many difficult-to-find resources about the event (hence the importance of the cyrillic spelling column in the table), as many are quoted in later published materials. Many of the unsourced people were either sourced in the section before (from underneath this table was yanked); some of the unlisted ones are mentioned in the Medvedev's book. Should be easy to find in original Russian/Ukrainian sources. When I created the table (it is pretty much purely my work), I wanted it to be a resource for looking up more details, and a beginning for a collaboration about putting up together the little scattered pieces of the event as it happened, who was where and what they did, including where different sources disagree. --Shaddack (talk) 05:15, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

The problem is that "significant vicinity" has no clear cut definition. One editor will say it ends 50 meters outside the plant, another will say it ends 500 km away. What is the firm criteria by which people are included in this list? Is the guy who fished in the cooling pond right outside eligible? What about a worker in the city of Chernobyl? Or Pripyat? Or someone who got thyroid cancer from it in Kiev?

Of course they should be added, if they died or were injured on that day. On that matter, the increased rates of death and permanent evacuation numbers should be mentioned, if not the names. People in the towns nearby still were injured or died, after all. If we don't know their names we should mention that they were affected. 67.180.92.188 (talk) 21:13, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

In any case, opinions differ. If you believe the article should be moved, simply put it through the movereq process and see what people think. Fell Gleaming^(talk) 05:36, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

There are no firm criteria and the line is blurry. The fishermen belong there as their reports are quoted in a number of sources. The people on the night shift in the blocks 3/4 are certain to be included. The next shift that handled the initial cleanup as well. The previous shift, the people who were preparing the test or should've run it themselves, too. The first responders as well. Plant management important for the event (Fomin, etc.) too. Some random workers whose names are not mentioned anywhere or are involved only tangentially and indirectly (your mentioned cancer in Kiev) fall on the other side of the blurred line. Essentially, if the relevant literature, reports or movies mention - or even interview! - them, and their name can serve as a keyword for finding another piece of the puzzle with further research, they should be listed. (And please no lawyering about "relevant".) Can you please link me to the req process, as I never did such bureaucracy before? --Shaddack (talk) 06:05, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

It seems to me that the list should include, at a minimum, the 56 official deaths mentioned in the Chernobyl Forum's 2005 report. That includes the personnel in the helicopter accident, 28 emergency workers from ARS, 2 immediate deaths, 1 possible heart attack, and 19 others who died from 1987 through 2004, including 9 from thyroid cancer, I believe. Perhaps an additional column to indicate that they are on that list. SkoreKeep (talk) 11:01, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

"Deaths due to the Chernobyl disaster" should presumably include not just people who died "on that day", but those who died of acute radiation sickness in the weeks and months following, and also mention the large numbers of early deaths due to cancer (although it is of course impossible to conclusively attribute every case to radiation poisoning). It should also mention the large number of miscarriages in places like the Ukraine and Belarus, etc., etc. We shouldn't limit it to deaths "on that day", because the Chernobyl disaster was not a one day event. (Disaster's over! You can all move back to Pripyat!) Some of these figures are controversial, and the article should explain the controversy in a neutral manner. Fuzzypeg★ 12:08, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Name Change?

Since the article contains the names of those injured, it shouldn't be titled "Deaths" due to etc.געגאנגען/Gegangen (talk) 10:19, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

• I have to agree. That doesn't make sense. One of the people listed near the top is a guy arrested and sent to jail with no mention of any injuries even. Either retitle this article, or strip out those who are not dead. 68.146.64.9 (talk) 17:01, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

My personal preference would probably be a renaming of the article, with the current name given to the first table, and those survivors who are deemed notable in a second table below.

What do others deem the most appropriate? A F K When Needed 23:51, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

• I agree with your idea of splitting the table. The name of the article definitely has to be changed as death is not apparent with all cases. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.97.120.110 (talk) 14:25, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Rephrasing of helicopter crash deaths

Regarding the death of Hanzhuk, Mykola Oleksandrovych which was added recently. The phrasing: "the helicopter flew into the radiation cloud, malfunctioned and crashed;" needs work. At 30 seconds you'll see the crash here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aw-ik1U4Uvk&t=0m30s it is plain as day that the helicopter's rotor cuts into the metal crane wires, damaging both, and causing the crash. I don't think linking what is essentially a snuff video is a good idea, does someone know of a good text reference source that can confirm or clarify what exactly caused the crash? SirShill (talk) 13:46, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

I'll agree that the description needs to be redone; I don't think those are my original words, as it is, from the film, obviously an industrial accident, not mysterious or unusual. Further, there is no "cloud" in evidence, nor was there as the smoke was long gone (this was in August, 4 months after the explosion). However, that movie is pretty iconic of the Chernobyl situation. It implies the problems of trying to stop the outpouring of radioactive material, the three crewmen killed are officially listed among those killed by the disaster (I'm not quite sure who the "official" is, but it was someone in the original Soviet investigation), and the movie was taken by Shevoshenko, who died of ARS complications in March of the next year (I also placed him in the list, though he is not "officially" a member; the chances of getting ARS elsewhere in the USSR were small). I think it is a valuable resource, and evidential in the debate over what happened in the helicopter accident. SkoreKeep (talk) 20:41, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

Article title

I'm thinking that since there seem to be up to 1,000,000 deaths so far from Chernobyl, that the title could better be described as perhaps, "Immediate deaths and injuries due to Chernobyl". What do the other editors think? WriterHound (talk) 02:50, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

I think it's worth having one centralised article where the real human toll is considered. You could have one article for immediate casualties and another for later casualties, and another for trends of likely Chernobyl-related cancers, etc., but all this does is scatter the information most readers would (I believe) be hoping to find in one place. Fuzzypeg★ 12:15, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

How about Casualties of the Chernobyl disaster? Boneyard90 (talk) 15:04, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Sounds perfect. No other opinions have surfaced yet; so perhaps we should start modifying the article towards a more inclusive approach, and rename it in a couple of days if no other opinions have surfaced. Fuzzypeg★ 23:37, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

I disagree with the suggested title: "death" is something well-defined. "Casualty" is more vague. I disagree that "immediate" must be a setarate page, because this term is subjective: who will decide what is immediate? It is not like a battle, held from May 14 to May 16, so that we count dead and injured to some precision. Here, people may be slowly dying for years. And I see no difference whether it was because he was a liquidator "immediately" irradiated by hot rods or some granny who tended her geeze when the radioactive cloud descended unto her. Ladnadruk (talk) 00:58, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps "proven" deaths should be the title - all the other deaths are unproven speculation. Which is not what Wikipedia is for. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.121.130.51 (talk) 22:52, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

Minor issue

I noticed that the section for Sitnikov, Anatoly Andreyevich describes him as having died of exposure to "1500 roentgens or 15 Sv". The American standard unit corresponding to Sv would be rem, not roentgen. Is this just a typo? I don't want to change it without knowing the source. IDK112 (talk) 03:50, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately, there's a bunch of units and they are not all commensurate:

Raw Radioactive intensity is in roentgens (SI unit); this is the measurement made with a geiger counter or other instrument.

Absorbed dose is radioactive intensity corrected for the absorbing material, such as flesh, water or lead. The RAD (old unit) or Gray (SI unit).

Equivalent dose is radioactivity corrected for equivalence of sources (alpha, beta, gamma, neutron) and equivalent injury potential of different tissues (heart, muscle, brain) is the REM (old units) or Sieverts (SI unit).

Now all three of these classes of units all measure the same thing: radioactive intensity, essentially energy delivered / mass, but the units are not equatable as they have different meanings; therefore the referenced sentence is wrong, as it equates radioactivity to equivalent dose, but which was the original value? It is most certainly a fatal value in any case. I believe that wikipedia should be using all SI units. 98.245.147.199 (talk) 02:56, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

In this particular case, changed the article to read "1500 roentgens" as that is what an original source states. That's not dose,and I don't know how the value was determined, but that's what it says. SkoreKeep (talk) 17:25, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

Page move

Sorry; reverted. Problems with the new title:

1. What is "initial deaths"? First week, first year...?
2. The article speak of 6000 deaths; which number I doubt may be called "initial".
3. In fact, there is a section which speaks about deaths related to severe immediate effects; these deaths make sense to call "initial". The remaining 6000 deaths are due to long-term effects and consequences.
4. Above is another suggestion about article title.

Please discuss. Ladnadruk (talk) 00:37, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Natural Death Rate

5,722 decontamination workers died within 4 years. In one sense this is an incredibly low rate of deaths. Do the maths. 600,000 workers. Average life expectancy say 70 years. Therefore average natural deaths per year 8,500. Four years average deaths equals 38,000. Of course these workers were probably mostly young servicemen in the prime of life so their average death rate would be nowhere near as high as 38,000. But normality may well have been as high as 5,722. Death rates amongst soldiers etc are surprising high - and not because they tend to get shot or blown up by the enemy; British MOD data shows combat is one of the least common of the multiple 'normal' causes of death amongst service personel which includes such mundane things such as cancers, car crashes and heart attacks. All claims about Chernobyl casualty numbers both hi and lo seem suspect. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.5.13.139 (talk) 16:00, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Yes, they sure are. Greenpeace claims indirect evidence for a quarter of a million, while the Chernobyl Forum cites 59 (see http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/chernobyl/health_impacts.html). In the first place, industrial causes (the three who died at the scene, and the helicopter crew), Acute Radiation Sickness (ARS) and radioactive thyroid cancers are about the only deaths that can be definitely attributed to the accident and radiation directly; all other causes from radiation, cancer, leukemia, birth defects, others, are all guesses, as multiple factors are always at play. The best that can be done is in noting a "bump" or increase in these problems from clinical records after the event at the expected onset time. The Chernobyl Forum notes no such bump for any of these. Dyatlov died of a heart attack 10 years after the accident, many ascribe that to his estimated 4 Sv of dose at Chernobyl as well as other exposures before that. Another helicopter pilot at Chernobyl, Anatoly Grishchenko, died in Washington state of leukemia just four years after the accident; was it radiation caused? No one will ever know with assurance. — Preceding unsigned comment added by SkoreKeep (talk • contribs) 21:06, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

Cyrillic

This is the English Wikipedia. Is there any good reason to include the Cyrillic versions of the names of the people who died. It makes the chart harder to read while not giving any aid to the vast majority of our readers, who can't read Cyrillic. Create a Russian (or Ukrainian) Wikipedia article on this subject if you want to give the Cyrillic versions. john k (talk) 16:14, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

I think it's both more respectful and more sobering to the readers. It never hurts to get a brief dip into something completely new; and it shows that they had ;lives of their own; it makes them more human, in my estimation. SkoreKeep (talk) 04:51, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

"Essay" style

The following editing comment was posted:

(tagging essay - terrible quality article that reads like a blog entry; should be scrapped or at least re-written in an encyclopedic manner free of syn, rhetoric, weasel words and POV statements)

The count of the deaths at Chernobyl is a highly charged topic in the nuclear power debate. As such, it is difficult to keep POV out of the article, or to determine what non-POV demands. I have rewritten the textual part of the article, hopefully to eliminate some of whatever it is that irritates the editor so. Deleting the article is, I don't think, an option - this article is widely cited and copied on the internet; the gathering of the names from various sources has been a difficult and ongoing task, and in the English world at least, unique. There are conflicts in the sources, and I have tried to make that plain; for example, one source says that no one in the general public was hospitalized (while citing the case of the physician), and another tells of the two fishermen who were apparently hospitalized enough that their dosages were cited.

I would invite comments which can lead to a better exposition of the topic. Even more I solicit further sources of data on the deaths and others that may have been overlooked. SkoreKeep (talk) 17:21, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

It's better, but it still needs work. I'll try to find some time to improve this. It really did (and still does to some extent) read like a high school essay, though. I think controversial topics need better care. This needs fewer rambling suppositions and colorful adjectives and more "X claims this; Y claims that; Z disputes that and agrees with Y." It's sufficient to lay out the general consensus if it goes against, for example, something Greenpeace said, without winking at the reader and then calling dissenters some luddite "pressure group." It makes sense to talk about what's generally accepted as a matter of fact, but we don't need Wikipedia's editors' personal feelings on dissenting voices. There's also a lot of problems with grammar and clarity. Still, thanks for trying to address it and sorry for the curt edit summary without much explanation. fi (talk) 22:38, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

Alternative opinion of the number of deaths

Three doctors came up with an estimate of 900,000 deaths from the disaster. I don't see a mention of this opinion. "That bullet did not come from my gun...you prove it"--Mark v1.0 (talk) 18:26, 13 May 2014 (UTC) Chernobyl:_Consequences_of_the_Catastrophe_for_People_and_the_Environment

Got a reference? I'll write it up if you supply one. SkoreKeep (talk) 02:31, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

OK, looking into it, I find that the reference is to the NY Academy of Sciences publication of the Yablakov, Nestorenko and Nestorenko paper "Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment", published in English version by the New York Academy of Sciences. The NYAS republished their Russian work in the spirit of "Open Forum"; see their statement on that at http://www.nyas.org/publications/annals/Detail.aspx?cid=f3f3bd16-51ba-4d7b-a086-753f44b3bfc1. The article "does not present new, unpublished work, nor is it a work commissioned by the New York Academy of Sciences".

As it stands, the lede paragraph states:

The scientific consensus on the effects of the disaster has been developed by the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR). In peer-reviewed publications UNSCEAR has identified fewer than 60 immediate deaths from trauma, acute radiation poisoning and cases of thyroid cancer from an original group of about 4,000 cases of thyroid cancers in the affected area. Other non-governmental organizations, many with staunch positions on the spectrum of the nuclear power debate, have claimed numbers up to a million excess deaths caused by the nuclear disaster. UN and other international agencies such as the Chernobyl Forum and the World Health Organization state that such numbers are wildly over-estimated, stressing a need for hard documentation of deaths. It is thought that the principal long-term adverse health outcomes are anxiety and depression among the general public across Eastern Europe as a result of irresponsible reporting and exaggerated statements by anti-nuclear power activists.

So, in the context of this article, which is stressing known, nameable deaths, the content of the NYAS article is covered. If you want to get more into that article in particular, go to Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment. SkoreKeep (talk) 02:54, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

Divers are fictional?

Comes forth 91.155.218.215, who removes Ananenko, Baranov and Bespalov, the divers who opened the basement floodgates, with the comment, "(People with fictional personal histories need to be removed from an authoritative site!)". Inasmuch as there is not an immediate citation on them, I will take a look. I think there is rather too much detail in their narrative to be made up, but odder things have happened.

Oh, yes, and he messed up the table formatting in the process. For shame. SkoreKeep (talk) 18:45, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

Well, I found them cited in Maples book, so I went back and reverted the change and added the citation. Then I noticed one of them already had a citation on it, a news story from AP, two weeks after the accident, in which the feat was described by TASS, and the AP picked it up a bare 4 days after it happened. The last paragraph reads: "The report did not mention if the men suffered any ill effects." So much for fictional personal histories. SkoreKeep (talk) 19:51, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

Mr. 91.155.218.215 tells me that, "(Invented personal histories and inadequate references. In the Soviet Union, each deceased person would have the full personal info with the place of bith and patronyms. Bring forward an original Soviet source, or do not repost!)". Man, what a hard time they must have in that country - you can't even die without full information.

Some points:

- People die all the time, and they don't always give up their middle names and dates to the local news. Even in the USSR.

- The USSR died on 25 December 1991, but left no patronymic, either.

- This is the US version of Wikipedia. What they may do in Russia is of no particular concern to me. There is a discussion above asking whether the Cyrillic names should be removed, presumably with patronymics. Is that what you would prefer?

- What rule requires me to have "an original Soviet source"?

- I presume you aren't arguing with whether their act occurred or not, but rather whether they died. The book says they did. It was a Canadian book written in Toronto; I presume they're not aware of your requirements.

- If you persist, this will be your third reversion, and someone higher up will have to get involved. If you have some overwhelming argument which you wish to acquaint me with, I hope you bring it here instead of just reverting again.

- It would be much more useful, perhaps, if you could verify their deaths, if you can. Or verify they didn't die. I would certainly like the information, even if it results in they having lived. Actually, PARTICULARLY if they lived.

To be taken seriously, you need to show me the place in Wikipedia policy that says death is fictional unless patronymic and dates are given. Other than that your own rules mean nothing. Have you a reference which says the story is untrue, the dives never happened or the men didn't die? You have removed verified information twice, now. Think before doing it again. SkoreKeep (talk) 23:03, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

At least one of the divers (Boris Baranov) was still alive in 2005 and gave an interview to a local newspaper: http://tribuna.com.ua/news/124286.htm — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.100.215.222 (talk) 21:33, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

Neutrality

The article should start by discussing the controversy surrounding the wildly differing claims and methods used by various studies and reports.

As it stands, the article is a pro-nuclear-power puff piece which simply presents the UNSCEAR findings as gospel and not just dismisses any other claims, but actually goes so far as to say that those other findings are responsible for the worst actual effects of the disaster (depression and anxiety).

It is entirely ridiculous. This is not an encyclopedic article at all. --85.197.7.43 (talk) 14:57, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

Well, by all means, jump right in. This article has always needed more editors. I, for one, would appreciate your input. SkoreKeep (talk) 17:50, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

Nah, as long as POV editors such as yourself are around, it's useless to waste time repairing the damage you're intentionally doing. Same reason I largely gave up on editing Wikipedia in general. It's a boken system that favors POV editors like you at the expense of encyclopedic accuracy. I'll try to repair the article if and only if you promise to stay away from editing the article forever. Deal? --87.79.162.123 (talk) 13:50, 16 August 2015 (UTC)