Hiroshima bombing families far healthier than predicted

THEY killed more than 200,000 people, destroyed two cities and shocked the world. But the long-term health effects of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs are not as severe as thought, according to a review of studies spanning six decades.

It concluded while the initial death count was ‘horrendous’, concerns that survivors and their children would be blighted by ill health are largely unfounded.

Report author Bertrand Jordan said: ‘Most people, including many scientists, are under the impression that survivors faced debilitating health effects and very high rates of cancer and that their children had higher rates of genetic disease.

‘There is an enormous gap between that belief and what has actually been found.’

Based on a review of more than 100 studies, his claim comes 71 years after the US dropped the world’s first atomic bombs on Japan. On August 6 1945, the uranium bomb ‘Little Boy’ devastated the city of Hiroshima with a blast equivalent to 15,000 tons of TNT. Three days later, the plutonium bomb ‘Fat Man’ exploded over Nagasaki, forcing the Japanese to surrender and ending the Second World War.

An estimated 226,000 people – 146,000 in Hiroshima and 80,000 in Nagasaki – died in the bombings and their immediate aftermath. Most were killed by the explosions, the fires that raged afterwards and acute radiation poisoning.

It has long been assumed survivors were doomed to develop cancer and other illnesses. But an ongoing US and Japanese research project involving 100,000 survivors, 77,000 of their children and 20,000 locals who were not in the cities at the time of the bombings tells a different story.

Dr Jordan, a French molecular biologist and nuclear physicist, says data produced by the research shows that while cancer rates are higher than normal in survivors, most did not develop the disease.

Overall, survivors were 10 per cent more likely to develop ‘solid’ cancers such as breast and prostate. The studies show that in those exposed to high doses of radiation, lifespan was cut by just over a year.

Average lifespan was ‘reduced by only a few months’, in contrast to Russia where it dropped by five years after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The research also shows babies born to survivors grew to be healthy adults, although those exposed to radiation in the womb suffered stunted growth and brain damage.