Environmental Effects
• In the first weeks after the explosion excessive levels of radiation were recorded in northern Scandinavia, Wales, Ireland, Northern Italy, Greece and coastal Alaska.
• As a result of prevailing winds and rains, the heaviest radioactive fallout was in southeastern Belarus and northern Ukraine.
• In Ukraine, over 4.6 million hectares of some of the most productive agricultural land in the world became contaminated.
• The total amount of radiation released was originally reported as 50 million curies by Soviet authorities. During the past decade, subsequent research and new calculations have resulted in revised estimates of up to 260 million curies.
• A permanent zone where human habitation and agricultural use is forbidden was established around the power station. North, east and south of the power plant the ‘exclusion-zone’ extends about 30 km, and about 60 km to the west.
• Gradual seepage of radiation into the water table, especially the Dnieper River and its tributaries, threatens the water supply for millions of people in coming decades.
• 21 percent of prime Belarusian farmland remains dangerously contaminated from the decaying components of plutonium.
• Radiation concentrated in sediments at the bottoms of lakes and ponds – the population continues to contaminate itself by fishing there. The average concentration of radionuclides in the groundwater has risen 10- to 100- fold.
• Although the air outside the exclusion zone is generally safe, ploughing, summer forest fires, and wind erosion continue to put the air at risk.
• In 2006, veterinarians in Rivne province, Ukraine, issued warnings to the northern contaminated villages that nearly two-thirds of the dairy cows in these villages are suffering from bovine leukaemia caused by radioactive elements, and that milk and other dairy products from these cows should not be consumed.
