Radioactive Cesium and the Heart: Pathophysiological Aspects

Bandazhevsky Y. Radioactive cesium and the Heart: Pathophysiological Aspects. "The Belrad Institute" 2001.-64 pp. ISBN 985-434-080-5 2 This book is one of a series of the author's publications on the effects of radioactive elements on the human body. The author analyzes the results of his clinical-laboratory studies on the impact of radioactive cesium [primarily 137 Cs] upon cardiac function. The book is intended for a wide range of readers, physicians and scientists who are interested in problems of the influence of incorporated radionuclides on the human body. New Russian-to-English translation was done by Valery Yarynich and Sergei Bershakov. Dr. Yuri Hiranuma provided a great deal of assistance with medical terminology and interpretation, especially in Chapter 4. General editing of the new translation was done by Steven Starr. Financial assistance, which made the translation possible, was generously provided by Physicians for Global Survival (Canada). Preface Dr. Bandazhevsky's groundbreaking research on the effects of radioactive cesium upon the children and people of Belarus is not well known in the United States. This is in large part because the government of Belarus chose to persecute him and suppress his work, which threatened to disrupt their plans to repopulate lands grossly contaminated with radioactive cesium. Bandazhevsky was forced to write this study while under house arrest, awaiting many years of subsequent imprisonment and torture. Government agents had already destroyed many of the archived samples, slides and materials that he and his colleagues and students had accumulated during the nine years he was Rector of the Gomel State Medical Institute of Belarus. However, Bandazhevsky had already published much of the statistical data he had obtained in 4 books: Clinical and experimental aspects of the effects of incorporated radionuclides in the body [Russian and English]. Gomel 1995; Pathophysiology of incorporated radioactivity. Gomel, 1997; Structural and functional effects of radionuclides incorporated into the body, Gomel, 1997. Pathology of incorporated radioactivity, Minsk, 1999, as well as numerous articles in the collection of scientific works of the Gomel State Medical Institute. He used much of this previously published information in conjunction with the slides that he had preserved at his residence, in order to write this study. For purposes of clarity, I have added a section, at the bottom of page 6, which provides more details on the methodology used by Dr. Bandazhevsky to obtain Whole Body Counts and the specific activity of 137 Cs (cesium-137). This section on …