Summary
This mother knows the risk every time she
prepares meals for 4 children, the foods are contaminated with radiation due to
Chernobyl accident, which spewed radioactive materials 30 years
ago.
Last year, the cash strapped Ukranian
government cancelled the local school lunch programs for 350,000 children. So families are having resort to milk and food
from land still contaminated. This 8
year old boy suffers from enlarged thyroid which is linked with radiation. “The nurse says that we have to go to Kiev
for treatment, but my father says we will go later.”
The government stopped supplying some
substance to reduce cesium 137 from milk.
Without government help, farmers are unwilling to buy them on their own. The families who live in 3 zones are
evacuated, but zone 4 are not eligible. We
know there is a danger, but what else can we do? There is no other way to survive here.
Without any state supplied lunch, these
tables are empty, and many children eat meals out of questionable quality, and
this 9 year old girl whose mother has cancer simply miss meal and would go
hungry. Children go fainted and they get
collapsed when there is no food.
Dr. Yuri Bandazhevsky is a pediatrician who
has studied the effect of small dose of radiation on human body. “I have to say that nobody cares about
this. And those hungry children are the
proof how the authority treats the population which is suffering in this
region.”
The studies differ on longtime
radiation effects, some minimizing the effects and some indicating significant effects. Gregory Hartl from WHO: “We have seen
increased level thyroid cancer, and increasingly strong correlation between cardiovascular
issues and exposure.”
Ukraine’s institute of radiology showed high
level of radiation of nuts, fruits, and mushroom, 2 to 5 times of permissible
level in Zone 4. People here are
affected by the residues of Chernobyl contamination in addition to the deteriorated
economy.
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