Unfortunately, the WHO/IAEA/UNDP numbers are far from being free of bias and politics. The often touted 4,000 number is actually a sub-sum of one category of victims who died due to one category of disease, there are larger numbers in that study alone; while there is no attempt at a true total estimate, and that not due to a total lack of research. Back in 2006, I wrote a whole diary about a critique of the 4,000 number and a review of research not previously available in English under the title Chernobyl's Downplayed Victims. Back then, in a separate Greenpeace-supported study by Russian Academy of Sciences scientists, a total of 212,000 deaths in Europe was estimated. Since then, a group led by another Russian Academy of Sciences scientist did an update and the New York Academy of Sciences published it in English, with a foreword written by a member of the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences for further emphasis on new sources, under the title Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment (which I mentioned in a Fukushima thread). Their ultimate estimate is 1 million, though most of the extra comes from (low confidence) low mortality rate estimates for other continents.

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}