Cesium in Chernobyl children visiting Sweden

["Bjorn Cedervall" <bcradsafers@hotmail.com>]

Björn Sandström (Foa, Umeå in Sweden) sent me a most illuminating message 
regarding the Chernobyl victims (that is what the 7-13 year old children 
were called on the Swedish TV news yesterday):

Björn wrote that since Hoppets Stjärna ("Star of the Hope") belongs to their 
area of Sweden (up "north") they have had some contact with them and in 1993 
Göran Ågren performed a wholebody measurement of eight out of 30 children 
who had arrived from Tcherikov in Belarus (about 80 kms = 50 U.S. miles east 
of Chernobyl).

The Cs-137 value for the group was 6.9 Bq/kg. A control group (15 year olds 
from Arvidsjaur - far north in Sweden and outside the Chernobyl fallout 
area) had 9.9 Bq/kg (//this must be old Soviet atomic bomb fallout 
cesium//). The original idea was to see if the one month visit to Sweden 
would mean lowered cesium levels, but due to the low initial result it was 
concluded that it would be rather meaningless to measure the children again 
when it was time to return home to Belarus.

Bjorn Cedervall   bcradsafers@hotmail.com

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