Eighteen years after the Chernobyl disaster, millions of people are still suffering from its aftermath, a Belarusian scientist told a Greencoat Forum at the IofC centre in London in May, 2004.
Eighteen years after the Chernobyl disaster, millions of people are still suffering from its aftermath, a Belarusian scientist told a Greencoat Forum at the IofC centre in London in May. Twenty-three per cent of Belarus - an area larger than the Netherlands and home to two million people - is contaminated. Because of the long half-life of the radioactive elements concerned, this situation will continue for decades and even centuries, so the issue is how to teach people the safest ways of living with it. Alexander Pinchook, a physics lecturer from the Mozyr State Pedagogic University, is a founder of CentreAction, an NGO which helps people living in the contaminated areas to break out of hopelessness and resignation and take control of their lives. He and his wife, Natallia, are two of a group of university lecturers, graduates and teachers who devote their spare time to working for the NGO.
In the years after the disaster, people living in the most highly contaminated areas were forcibly evacuated, leaving ghost villages which are now being reclaimed by the forests, the Pinchooks said. Those in less contaminated, but still dangerous, areas were allowed to choose whether to move or stay. Many stayed, fearing that homesickness would only compound the effects of radiation. In all, only some 135,000 people left the area.
The greatest danger for those who remain is eating contaminated food. As trees absorbed high levels of fallout, mushrooms and fruit gathered in the forests, meat from wild animals, and milk from cows grazed on contaminated land are particularly dangerous. Poverty, and the indifference born of despair, often mean that people do not take the precautions they could. Children are more vulnerable to radiation than adults, because they are still growing. Statistics show that while 85 per cent of children in the area were regarded as healthy in 1988, only 15 per cent are now. 'One teacher told us that whereas only three children in her class were unable to take part in PE before the disaster, only three children are fit enough to do so now,' said Pinchook.
Although no figures exist for the numbers of people who have died as a result of the disaster, cemeteries have been growing dramatically in size, and a large number of men are dying in their forties. CentreAction's main focus is on public education. 'We let people see the test results on our screens with their own eyes,' said Pinchook. They encourage families to avoid forest foods and, if they are unable to afford uncontaminated milk, to process milk from their own cows into butter or cheese, as most of the contamination drains away in the whey. The NGO, in partnership with Focus International, is now expanding into providing equipment and teaching materials for schools in the contaminated areas, which are seriously under-resourced.
In response to questions, Pinchook agreed that giving children holidays in the UK and other countries contributed greatly to their health and wellbeing, but pointed out that this improvement is lost on their return home, unless their families are given the information and technology (such as milk separators) to eat more healthily.
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