Article: 976 of sgi.talk.ratical
From: (dave "who can do? ratmandu!" ratcliffe)
Subject: WWC: Part III--Women/Children bear major burden of military pollution
Summary: women/children bear most burden by military activities & pollution
Keywords: description of the magnitude of planetary nuclear pollution
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc.
Date: Tue, 9 Feb 1993 15:41:28 GMT
Lines: 361
excerpts from Part III's introduction:
It has been well documented that given the same ionizing
radiation exposure, women are more at risk of developing a fatal
cancer than are men. This is attributable to two main factors: (1)
women's breast and uterine tissue is at high risk of cancer and (2)
women's longevity provides for longer development time for tumors.
The first reason is the primary one. . . .
Non-fatal cancers often require surgery with its physical and
psychological suffering. Even when treatment is limited to
chemotherapy with or without radiation therapy, most people would
agree that the resultant suffering for the patient is extraordinary.
Again we find women and children bearing the brunt of the
suffering from radiation exposure. Given the same radiation exposure
to the thyroid gland, for example, women experience three times as
many thyroid cancers as men. Most of these are non-fatal. The female
breast and uterine cancers induced by radiation are also frequently
non-fatal, although they have physical and psycho-social dimensions
hard to ignore. . . .
Concern for those yet unborn has been resisted by official
recommending bodies from the beginning.
Even when information was available from Kerala, India, a
naturally occurring area of higher than normal ionizing radiation
exposure inhabited for more than 300 years, no study of the
congenitial diseases to be found there was undertaken. The World
Health Organization identified this area and called for a study as
early as 1957. Damage to offspring has not been a priority concern of
polluting nuclear nations, many of whom claim that non-studies confirm
that there is no problem with chronic radiation exposure.
With minimal funding and great personal sacrifice, Indian
researchers have now demonstrated major health problems among those
chronically exposed to ionizing radiation. This has widespread
implications for communities exposed to nuclear and uranium effluents,
waste and accidents. . . .
Women have throughout history set aside their personal priorities
in order to give birth and to assist the dying. They have also
carried the burden of nursing the sick and cleaning up the mess
created by war-making. The nuclear waste and toxic chemical waste
produced by men over the last 50 years is beyond women's ability to
cleanup. It has led to an international environmental crisis.
It is hoped that the nature of man's uncontrolled pollution,
disregard for reproductive integrity and the healthfulness of air,
water and food, will force men to relinquish exclusive decision making
power. As a remedy for the warped development and security planning
of the past, I am including a sketch for a national report card
whereby women's organizations can rate the progress of their nations
health.
Introduction to Part III, describing how women and children bear the major
burden of suffering caused by military activities and pollution, of Dr.
Rosalie Bertell's Testimony prepared for the World Women's Congress For A
Healthy Planet held in Miami, Florida, November 8-12, 1991:
___________________________________________________________________________
PART III
THE BURDEN OF SUFFERING FROM THE DEATHS AND
DISABILITIES CAUSED BY MILITARY ACTIVITIES AND
POLLUTION FALLS DISPROPORTIONATELY ON WOMEN AND
CHILDREN, ALTHOUGH THEY HAVE LITTLE OR NO POWER
TO MAKE DECISIONS ABOUT, PARTICIPATE IN OR PROFIT
FROM OF THE ACTIVITIES INVOLVED.
___________________________________________________________________________
FATAL CANCERS:
It has been well documented that given the same ionizing
radiation exposure, women are more at risk of developing a fatal
cancer than are men. This is attributable to two main factors: (1)
women's breast and uterine tissue is at high risk of cancer and (2)
women's longevity provides for longer development time for tumors.
The first reason is the primary one.
The U. S. National Academy of Science Committee on the Biological
Effects of Ionizing Radiation 1990 Report (BEIR V) estimates that for
whole body exposure of 0.1 Sievert (10 rem) to 100,000 adult males of
all ages, the expected mean number of fatal cancers induced would be
760 (with a range of 500 to 1200). The same exposure to adult women
of all ages would yield an expected mean number of 810 induced cancers
(with a range of about 600 to 1200).
The same report estimates that the fatal cancer risk for exposure
in childhood is at least twice that for a comparable exposure in
adulthood. Some scientists consider it to be three times greater.
For a 0.1 Sievert (10 rem) exposure of 100,000 children, the induced
fatal cancer risk is about 1600 according to BEIR V.
These numbers build in a factor of 2 reduction for low dose and
slow dose rate. Use of this reduction factor is controversial and not
well supported on a theoretical basis. There is also supporting, but
not conclusive, evidence for NOT introducing this reduction factor.
In fact many studies show greater effects for low chronic exposure.
Hence the true number of induced fatal cancers may be 1520 or higher
for adult males, 1620 or higher for adult females and 3200 or higher
for children in the comparable circumstances of 100,000 each, exposed
to 0.1 Sievert (10 rem) whole body ionizing radiation.
NON-FATAL CANCERS:
Non-fatal cancers often require surgery with its physical and
psychological suffering. Even when treatment is limited to
chemotherapy with or without radiation therapy, most people would
agree that the resultant suffering for the patient is extraordinary.
Again we find women and children bearing the brunt of the
suffering from radiation exposure. Given the same radiation exposure
to the thyroid gland, for example, women experience three times as
many thyroid cancers as men. Most of these are non-fatal. The female
breast and uterine cancers induced by radiation are also frequently
non-fatal, although they have physical and psycho-social dimensions
hard to ignore.
Childhood leukemia, which comprises about 50% of childhood
cancers, is now considered non-fatal for the majority of children in
developed countries. It remains, however, a devastating disease with
lifetime disability implications.
EFFECTS ON OFFSPRING:
In July of 1983 the U. S. Center for Birth Defects in Atlanta,
Georgia, reported a doubling in physical and mental disabilities in
those under 17 years of age in the U. S. population. Such factors as
reduction in polio and other serious childhood diseases, improved
vaccines and medical care would have led one to expect a reduction in
disabilities in children, rather than an increase.
In the U. S. about 3.5 million children required special
education programs in 1976-77. This number rose to 4 million in
1981-82 in spite of an overall decline in the number of school age
children. Defects seen in about 2% of the newborns in the late
1950's, were seen in about 4% in the early 1980's. Long term
debilitating effects such as breathing problems in children has
increased from 1% to 2% incidence.
This ill health cannot be entirely attributed to higher survival
rate for defective children, since the U. S. has a very poor childhood
mortality rate relative to other western countries. Many scientists
are relating these problems primarily to the toxic pollutants in air,
water, food and the workplace.
The U. S. Environmental Protection Agency, citing the research of
Ralph Dougherty at Florida State University, reported 23% of U. S.
males functionally sterile in 1980. Similar testing in 1938 found
only 0.5% of the males tested functionally sterile. Dougherty also
found the lower sperm counts correlated with organophosphates
(pesticides and defoliants) in the sperm cells. Radionuclides also
travel in the blood and lodge in tissue, damaging both sperm and ovum.
The defective but still viable sperm and ovum are thought to cause
spontaneous abortions, perinatal or infant deaths and defective
children. Rise in sperm death rate is correlated with rise in
defective sperm or ovum rate, perinatal loss, and defective children.
The ability of ionizing radiation to cause hereditary defects was
first shown by H. Muller in 1927. Artificial sources of radiation
(nuclear fission) mimic the genetic damage caused by naturally
occurring radioactive particles (the uranium and thorium decay chain
and potassium 40). Scientists generally agree that in highly evolved
species (human included) 99% of these induced mutations are harmful.
All types of mutations which can be induced by chemicals can also be
induced (and induced more efficiently) by radiation.
Many genetic changes are recessive, and will not become visible
in the population until the third or fourth generation of offspring.
The observed damage likely precedes a sharper increase to be observed
later.
It has been estimated that for a 0.1 Sievert (10 rem) ionizing
radiation exposure to a population of 100,000 of mixed ages and sexes,
there would result: 2100 interuterine deaths, 500 to 26400 mutations
(eventually resulting in genetic diseases), 1700 low birthweight
babies some of whom would have mental and/or physical retardation, and
9 to 11 children with congenital defects or cancers.
Producing defective children less able to cope with a hazardous
environment at the same time that we increase environmental hazards
through pollution is to threaten species survival.
STANDARD SETTING:
Radiation Protection Standards established in the 1950's by
I.C.R.P. were based on the effects on the Standard Man: the white
male, 20 to 30 years of age, living in a temperate climate, in good
health. It is only recently that any special concern for women and
children has been manifested.
Concern for those yet unborn has been resisted by official
recommending bodies from the beginning.
Even when information was available from Kerala, India, a
naturally occurring area of higher than normal ionizing radiation
exposure inhabited for more than 300 years, no study of the
congenitial diseases to be found there was undertaken. The World
Health Organization identified this area and called for a study as
early as 1957. Damage to offspring has not been a priority concern of
polluting nuclear nations, many of whom claim that non-studies confirm
that there is no problem with chronic radiation exposure.
With minimal funding and great personal sacrifice, Indian
researchers have now demonstrated major health problems among those
chronically exposed to ionizing radiation. This has widespread
implications for communities exposed to nuclear and uranium effluents,
waste and accidents.
BURDEN ON WOMEN:
The burden of untoward pregnancies, care for physically and
mentally damaged children normally falls to women. They have also
carried the burden of family support (financial and emotional) with
the disability and early death of the atomic veterans, uranium and
nuclear workers.
Women have throughout history set aside their personal priorities
in order to give birth and to assist the dying. They have also
carried the burden of nursing the sick and cleaning up the mess
created by war-making. The nuclear waste and toxic chemical waste
produced by men over the last 50 years is beyond women's ability to
cleanup. It has led to an international environmental crisis.
It is hoped that the nature of man's uncontrolled pollution,
disregard for reproductive integrity and the healthfulness of air,
water and food, will force men to relinquish exclusive decision making
power. As a remedy for the warped development and security planning
of the past, I am including a sketch for a national report card
whereby women's organizations can rate the progress of their nations
health. [this is "PART V" --ratitor]
The "report card" is rudimentary and crude. It needs to be
fleshed out by the creativity and caring of the women of the world.
Women interested in furthering this movement toward a healthy planet
are invited to contact me or IPAC, and to take initiative in
expanding/perfecting this tool.
Thank you.
[(signed) Rosalie Bertell]
Rosalie Bertell, Ph.D., GNSH
___________________________________________________________________________
Documents for Part III
1. Letter from a Japanese physician on similarity between illnesses
of U. S. radiation victims and atomic bomb survivors.
2. Testimony of women living downwind of the Nevada Test Site.
3. Story of one of the many nuclear military accidents and its
Danish victims - Personal testimony of one worker.
4. Scientific study of the nuclear weapon testing and health -
Makhijani 1991.
5. U. S. Court Case against the Government for negligence in its
nuclear testing - 1984.
6. Atomic Veteran (Partial) Compensation Act of 1988 - U. S.
Federal Code.
7. Statement of Rosalie Bertell on Continued Distress in the
Marshall Islands - 1989.
8. Testimony of a Pacific Woman.
9. Press release on the study in Kerala, India.
10. Plight of Australian Atomic Veterans.
11. Preliminary Dose Assessment of the Chernobyl Accident - Western
scientists convince Soviets to lower their estimates by a factor
of ten.
12. Report on the aftermath of the Chernobyl nuclear accident.
13. Global nature of the radiation exposure documented through food.
--
Humanity has been held to a limited and distorted view of itself, from its
interpretation of the most intimate emotions to its grandest visions of
human possibilities, by virtue of its subordination of women.
Until recently, "mankind's" understandings have been the only
understandings generally available to us. As other perceptions arise--
precisely those perceptions that men, because of their dominant position
could not perceive--the total vision of human possibilities enlarges and
is transformed.
-- Jean Baker Miller, "Toward a New Psychology of Women" (1976)