Re:Chernobyl " population will continue to slide toward extinction "

[Emil Murat <kerrembaev@YAHOO.COM>]

Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2001 10:58:17 -0400From: "Franta,

Jaroslav" 

Subject: Chernobyl " population will continue to slide

toward extinction "

Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2001 10:56:00

-0400Return-Receipt-To: "Franta, Jaroslav" 

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Here's a great entry in the competition for who can

write the most

outrageous article on Chernobyl (no trace of any

journalism professional

code of ethics here...) - its from Sunday's Toronto

Star :Apr. 22, 01:01 EDT 

No end to the fallout 

Fifteen years later, children in Belarus bear the

brunt of the Chernobyldisaster

Menno MeijerSPECIAL TO THE STAR

MINSK - IT IS A catastrophe of global proportions: A

silent, unseen killer

is slowly creeping its way out of Belarus and into

surrounding countries. 

It is destroying the future of 10 million people in

Belarus who struggle

daily with the effects of radiation. It's the children

who suffer the most. 

When reactor Number 4 at the Chernobyl nuclear plant

in Ukraine exploded 15

years ago Thursday, it burned for days while officials

kept silent. May Day

celebrations were nearing and the Soviet government

said little. 

The wind sent the radioactive cloud into Belarus,

whose border with Ukraine

lies 10 kilometres north of the plant, and the rain

washed it from the sky

onto an unsuspecting people. 

Here in Minsk, the capital of Belarus, soccer players

became sick as the

rain fell. Spectators, too, became ill. No one knew

what was happening tothem. 

A 6-year-old girl walking home from school in the rain

was met at the door

by her frantic mother. The woman was a surgeon at a

children's hospital and

had heard the rumour about radioactive fallout. She

washed her daughter and

kept the doors and windows shut. The child lost most

of her hair. 

The heaviest contamination fell in the Mogilev and

Gomel regions, in the

southeast corner of Belarus. 

In areas close to Chernobyl, many people were

evacuated immediately,

although most had nowhere to go. But it would be five

years before people in

areas a little farther away were evacuated. Some of

the most heavily

contaminated communities have since been bulldozed to

keep people from

returning to their homes. 

The countryside is poison now. Wherever houses

remained, the old people

returned. They grow crops and raise livestock. But the

children are gone.

There are no birds in the trees. 

In other areas, there was no evacuation. Children are

fed at the schools

with food the state considers safe, but they play in

schoolyards with high

radiation levels. They breath the dust, they ingest

the poison. The children

are sick. 

Suffering with what is often called Chernobyl AIDS,

their immune systems are

failing. This has led to a sharp rise in stomach and

intestinal diseases,

heart disease, anemia, endemic goitre, vision problems

and cancer. 

Children exposed to the fallout in the first few days

after the reactor

explosion received high doses of radioactive iodine.

They are now victims of

thyroid cancer, which is growing at a rate of 100

cases annually. Each day

at the thyroid cancer clinic in Minsk, doctors operate

on seven or eight

patients. 

In the 11 years before the blast, there were 1,392

cases of thyroid cancer

in the general population. In the 11-year period

following, there were 5,449

cases, most of them children. 

The rate of absenteeism in the schools is about 10 per

cent owing to

illness. Many studies point to a large increase in

birth defects and genetic

mutation. 

On top of everything else, Belarus is in economic

crisis with skyrocketing

inflation. In the first year after Chernobyl, the tiny

country spent 20 per

cent of its annual budget on fighting the fallout.

Now, it allots only 5 per

cent. 

In orphanages, children live with small portions of

food and, in most cases,

without toilet paper or soap to wash. When they turn

17, they are released,

but they have nowhere to go. The incidence of suicide

among those who leave

the orphanages is 17 per cent, while 35 per cent end

up in jail. 

Often, children arrive at the orphanages after their

penniless parents -

many of them alcoholics - desert them. But as long as

they have family, the

children can't be adopted. 

In a sanatorium in the Vitebsk region, 150 children

live for up to three

years tied to their beds so a disease affecting their

hip joints can heal.

For want of a leg brace worth $4,200, they could go

home. Instead, they are

lined in rows in rooms resembling classrooms where

they eat, sleep andstudy. 

On collective farms, workers often go months without

their pay, which

usually is only about $20 a month. 

One woman gets up at 4:30 a.m. to go to work in a

dairy farm until 8 p.m.

She works seven days a week and in 12 years has had

only one four-week

vacation. She is 33 and looks a well-worn 50. Her

children come to the farm

after school to see her and play in the muck while she

milks emaciated cows

fed meagre portions of nutrient-poor, contaminated

silage. 

The cows produce only about three litres each milking.

Some milk is too

contaminated to process at the local plant, but the

woman is allowed to take

it home to her hungry children. It is deducted from

her wages. 

Some orphanages are sponsored by groups such as

Canadian Aid for Chernobyl,

which provides clothes, soap, toilet paper and money

for renovations. But

foreign aid can't keep up with the need. 

Used incubators at the Minsk children's hospital were

donated several years

ago by Switzerland but are falling apart. Just $7,000

a year would repair

the equipment. 

The technology is available to clean up the

contamination. Caesium 135,

which was released into the atmosphere by the

explosion, has a radioactive

half-life of 2 million years. That can be reduced to

just 2* days by

shooting neutrons into it, and the nuclear research

centre in Minsk has the

largest neutron generator in the world. 

Plants with large root systems can be used to extract

radioactive material

from the soil and the top layer of soil can be scraped

off and neutralized

by the neutron generator. 

But the price tag for decontamination is about $500

billion. And until the

world is ready to accept the reality of the situation

in Belarus, the

population will continue to slide toward extinction -

and the fallout will

spread. 

Menno Meijer is a freelance photographer and reporter

based in London, Ont.

He recently returned from a trip to Belarus.



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