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["Toni Hawryluk" <tonihawr AT msn.com>]

I cannot find the book titled "Rebirth" at my
library-on-the-Web, but it's about the survivors
of a nuclear war and how they've adapted -
or not - to the mutations caused by radiation
*many* generations later.

Like most "real" or technically "sound" "science-
fiction", it's coming true ... I wonder how close
the author came to what's happening and going
to happen to *these* survivors : (I'm also now
wondering how much of an accident this was -
considering how morally and ethically "challenged"
some "scientific researchers" are. Or are not.
Regardless of the price their "specimens" pay.)

http://famulus.msnbc.com/famulusintl/ap11-10-085940.asp?reg=europe&vts=111020040910<http://famulus.msnbc.com/famulusintl/ap11-10-085940.asp?reg=europe&vts=111020040910>

 

Despite radiation warnings, life in Chernobyl-contaminated region is 
beginning to return to normal

 

ASSOCIATED PRESS

 

SVETILOVICHI, Belarus, Nov. 10 - The signs say ''KEEP OUT'' and warn of 
radiation contamination, but the mushroom-pickers trudge right past them 
carrying their pails. 

 

     Eighteen years after the reactor at <>Chernobyl in neighboring Ukraine 
exploded, spewing a cloud of radiation that blew north and contaminated 22 
percent of this ex-Soviet republic, activists warn of a new threat facing 
Belarusians: the longing to return to normal life. 
       The government - and many Belarusians - are eager to put the world's 
worst nuclear accident behind them. President Alexander Lukashenko, branded 
Europe's last dictator, has made it a priority to repopulate much of the 
Chernobyl-infected region beyond the hardest hit areas. 
       But opposition parties and advocacy groups such as the Belarus-based 
Children of Chernobyl accuse the government of overriding warnings that 
radiation continues to contaminate this region of pine forests and 
mud-splattered farming villages. 


       Belarusians, many of them poor and ill-informed about radiation, 



are returning home to villages that still require permanent monitoring 
because of higher than average radiation levels. Tractors till farmland, cows 
graze and residents fill their yards with vegetable gardens. 



Others are venturing into the ''exclusion zones'' - the worst hit areas - 



to forage in the forests for berries and wild mushrooms, which are then sold 
throughout the region. 


       The critics claim that the government of this tightly controlled 
nation of 10 million is capitalizing on the plight of desperate jobseekers to 
repopulate still dangerous areas and boost agricultural production. 
       In the last five years, Belarus has struck 1,000 population centers 
from the danger list. It has boosted regional farm production by 30 percent, 



cut Chernobyl-related welfare funding from 14 percent of the approximately $3 
billion annual budget to 4 percent, 



and censored health statistics of rising death and cancer rates, the 
opponents say. 


       ''We must now worry about the children of the children of Chernobyl,'' 
said Gennady Groushevoy, head of Children of Chernobyl. 



''The health danger is reaching into a second generation ... but the 
government has retreated into a Soviet-era attitude of silence.'' 
       In all, 7 million people in the former Soviet republics of Belarus, 
Russia and Ukraine are believed to have suffered medical problems as a result 
of the April 25, 1986, accident. In Ukraine, more than 2.32 million people, 



including 452,000 children, have been treated for radiation-linked illnesses, 
including thyroid and blood cancer and cancerous growths, according to 
Ukrainian health officials. 
       Most villages around the plant remain off-limits today, though some 
Ukrainians are moving back despite government warnings. 


       Sixty percent of the fallout landed over Belarus, contaminating a 
region that was home to more than 1.5 million people. Some 125,000 families 
were evacuated, and large swaths of forest and farmland were declared 
''exclusion zones,'' sealed by checkpoints. 
       Many of the evacuees still complain bitterly that household 
belongings, left behind during their hurried retreat, later turned up for 
sale in regional markets, while they lived in limbo in shabbily constructed 
apartment blocks. 
       Nikolai Nagorny, director of the International Committee of the Red 
Cross' Chernobyl program, said that 



cases of thyroid cancer - one of the few radiation-related illnesses that has 
been well studied around Chernobyl - have skyrocketed among children 



in Belarus' affected regions, from just 



two cases of thyroid cancer before the accident to at least 1,000 in the 10 
years after. 


       ''I don't feel any danger, and even if I did - what would it matter?'' 
said Raisa Stradayeva, 62, as she and 



her grandson, Andrusha, trudged home through the rain in Svetilovichi, a 
village just outside the highly contaminated exclusion zone. 
       ''I have to live somewhere and this is my home,'' she said. 
       Besides, she said, the health risks can't be that severe because 
''People are returning all the time.'' 


       Not only Belarusians; foreigners are coming too, mostly from poorer 
ex-Soviet republics, seeking jobs and housing. 


       Yuri Kuzmich, head of Belarus' Chernobyl exclusion and monitoring 
zone, rejects accusations that the government is intentionally sending anyone 
into danger. In his office in Gomel, a city of 500,000 that has suffered 
increased radiation-related illnesses, Kuzmich said his staff does all it can 
to keep people out of the worst-hit areas and provide information to those 
living in the surrounding region. 
       But, he admits, not everyone is on the same page. State-run farms 
''have plans to fulfill ... and they want to fulfill these no matter what,'' 
he said. Those farms need workers, and farm workers come. 


       ''The passage of time and economic necessity take their toll,'' he 
said, sitting beneath a portrait of Lukashenko. ''Human memory is short. 
Eighteen years might as well be 100.'' 


       Kuzmich's team oversees the exclusion zone, manning checkpoints, 
escorting visitors into the region and collecting scientific and medical 
data. Some employees are also assigned to oversee the villages under 
radiation monitoring. 
       However, a reporter visiting recently was never questioned when 
entering the exclusion zone, checkpoints appeared deserted and the mushroom- 
and berry-pickers walk through on the main road, via forest paths or on buses 
that still pass through the zone. 
       Margarita Artemyeva, who moved here from Kazakhstan, was helping her 
25-year-old daughter, Natasha, wallpaper her new home - a damp bungalow 
identical to its neighbors. 


       ''I don't even think about it. I'm not scared at all. If there was a 
real danger, we'd know it, wouldn't we?'' said Artemyeva, 44. 



        She rejected the claim that the poor are being used to repopulate the 
area. 


       Critics claim vegetables, milk and meat from Chernobyl-contaminated 
regions such as Svetilovichi are being sold throughout Belarus. But in a 
nation where the average monthly salary is about $150, few have the option of 
putting health concerns first and buying imports. 
       Besides, the berries and wild mushrooms supplement meager diets and 
also sell well. 
       After Artemyeva mentioned she loved mushrooms, one of Kuzmich's 
employees took her aside and gently warned her against collecting them in the 
exclusion zone. 



 

 

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