Fortunately, Chernobyl health records are now available to the public. They show that people living in the radioactive traces fell ill from cancers, respiratory illness, anaemia, auto-immune disorders, birth defects, and fertility problems two to three times more frequently in the years after the accident than before. In a highly contaminated Belarusian town of Veprin, just six of 70 children in 1990 were characterised as “healthy”. The rest had one chronic disease or another. On average, the Veprin children had in their bodies 8,498 bq/kg of radioactive caesium (20 bq/kg is considered safe).
For decades, researchers have puzzled over strange clusters of thyroid cancer, leukaemia and birth defects among people living in Cumbria, which, like southern Belarus, is an overlooked hotspot of radioactivity from cold war decades of nuclear bomb production and nuclear power accidents.
Currently, policymakers are advocating a massive expansion of nuclear power as a way to combat climate change. Before we enter a new nuclear age, the declassified Chernobyl health records raise questions that have been left unanswered about the impact of chronic low doses of radioactivity on human health.
[…] Even though much less rain fell than predicted, it reportedly still had a serious impact on the Fukushima area. Bags filled with radioactive soil sit in floodwater in Iitate, Fukushima, as seen in pictures here: https://nuclear-news.net/2016/09/01/after-typhoon-lionrock-landed-in-fukushima And, the water appears to have caused the ice wall to partially melt at Fukushima, allowing “highly radioactive water to leak from around the damaged reactor buildings“, the Asahi Shimbun cites TEPCO as saying: https://nuclear-news.net/2016/09/02/typhoons-cause-ice-wall-to-melt-at-fukushima-nuclear-plant/ […]
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