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PERSPECTIVE ARTICLE

Overestimation of the cardiovascular consequences of low-dose radiation exposures

Sergei V. Jargin1*
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1 Department of Public Health, Peoples’ Friendship University (RUDN), Moscow, Russia
Global Translational Medicine 2025, 4(1), 56–66; https://doi.org/10.36922/gtm.7229
Submitted: 10 December 2024 | Revised: 14 January 2025 | Accepted: 17 February 2025 | Published: 18 March 2025
© 2025 by the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )
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Abstract

This study focuses on radioactive contamination in the Urals, where the consequences were more severe in the long term than those after the Chernobyl accident. The difference is that the latter was a technogenic catastrophe, while the former was radioactive contamination tolerated for 70 years, with several accidents in between. In earlier publications by Russian researchers, no cancer frequency elevation was reported after exposures of <0.5 Sv or generally in the populations exposed to low doses. Later, the same scientists started to claim similar relative risks for cancer and other diseases among exposed people in the Urals and atomic bomb survivors in Japan. Apparently, there was an ideological shift in 2005 – 2007. Trimming of statistics was not unusual in the former Soviet Union. Potential motives included stirring antinuclear protests in other countries and the strangulation of nuclear energy aimed at boosting fossil fuel prices.

Keywords
Techa river
East Urals Radioactive trace
Ionizing radiation
Cerebrovascular diseases
Cardiovascular diseases
Funding
None.
Conflict of interest
The author declares that he has no competing interests.
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