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 In 1986 at 1:23 a.m. a violent explosion ripped apart reactor number 4 at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Soviet Ukraine along the border of Belarus. The reactor spewed tons of uranium fuel, plutonium and other radionuclides three miles into the atmosphere. For 10 days the lethal fire emitted particles 90 times more deadly that those released from the 1945 Hiroshima bomb, and the winds blew the radioactive debris northward across Belarus and Europe. 70% of the invisible toxins rained down on unsuspecting Belarusian citizens, trapping them under a blanket of potential death. Their government continued to lie about the lethal effects of the radiation even so far as to deny and not report the accident. Over two million residents, including 600,000 young children, still live in the ares of Belarus contaminated by Chernobyl. Although a steady increase in disease rates, particularly in thyroid cancer, has been demonstrated, the cumulative impact of constant exposure to low-level radiation is officially ignored. As a result of the catastrophe at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station the country of Belarus has been exposed to radio-nuclide contamination. The contamination by Cesium 137 exceeds 37 KBK/sq. m. The average birth rate has decreased 25% in comparison with the 1985 rate as confirmed by the Republican Congress of Pediatrics in Minsk. There has been a considerable increase in morbidity among children under 14 years of age for the recent decade in the Gomel and Mogilev regions. Incidence of malignant growths in numbers of children and adults has increased by 2.5 times in these regions. As a result of the disaster, 600,000 children have been exposed to the radiation, causing their thyroid glands to be seriously effected. Massive outbreaks of auto-immune thyroiditis and thyroid cancer have been reported by the Scientific Research Institute of Radiological Medicine. The breast milk of women living in Gomel and Mogilev regions was found to contain a high density of the radio-nuclides Cesium 137 and Cesium 90, deadly isotopes. Every other inhabitant (17,800 people) of the Hoiniki District in the Gomel Region was examined by the doctors at the Institute of the Belarusian Academy of Sciences. They reported that 93% of the test subjects were ill. Genetic studies have only just begun. |
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