• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Arctic; Pacific; Human health
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.115.888; http://www.princeton.edu/~ota/disk1/1995/9504/950405.PDF

At the heart of the tremendous interest in the nuclear waste dumping that was carried out by the former Soviet Union in the Arctic and North Pacific are concerns over the potential human health effects or ecological impacts. People have wondered how seriously the dumped wastes might contaminate the environment, and whether they pose current or future hazards to human health or ecosystems. Understanding both current and future risks to human health requires information about the nature and amount of radionuclides released into the environment, and information about their transport through the environment and through food chains to reach human beings. Understanding risks to ecosystems requires additional information about the effects of radiation on the variety of different organisms that make up the ecosystems. Important questions remain at each step described above. Since the release of the Yablokov report describing dumping in the Arctic, more has been learned about some of the wastes, but their condition and likely radionuclide release rates remain largely unknown. As described in chapter 2, current levels of radionuclides in the seawater and sediment in Arctic seas do not suggest that significant releases have