Chernobyl and the Mortality Crisis in Eastern Europe and the Former USSR

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the mortality crisis which affected Eastern Europe and the republics of the former USSR at the time of the transition to a market economy was arguably the major peacetime health crisis of recent decades. Chernobyl and the Mortality Crisis in Eastern Europe and the Old USSR discusses the importance of that crisis, surprisingly underplayed in the scientific literature, and presents evidence suggesting a potential role of the Chernobyl disaster among the causes contributing to it.

“That the Chernobyl disaster contributed decisively – though to an extent yet to be determined – to the public health crisis in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Bulgaria, is the key notion in this book. An intriguing hypothesis that is cogently argued and that has important implications for our future.”
Fernando J. García López, National Epidemiology Centre, Carlos III Health Institute, Madrid, Spain

“This book poses that some unknown fraction of the mortality crisis in Eastern Europe could plausibly be due to radioactivity. Its value is in combining the different strands of the argument – including some that are not so well known – to support a hypothesis but not to claim that it is fully proved or disproved by the evidence.”
Edward L. Ionides, Professor of Statistics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA