Note to users. If you're seeing this message, it means that your browser cannot find this page's style/presentation instructions -- or possibly that you are using a browser that does not support current Web standards. Find out more about why this message is appearing, and what you can do to make your experience of our site the best it can be.

Site Tools

  • AAAS
  • Subscribe
  • Feedback

Site Search

Search Advanced

Science 20 April 2001:
Vol. 292. no. 5516, pp. 420 - 426
DOI: 10.1126/science.292.5516.420
Prev | Table of Contents | Next

News Focus

NUCLEAR RADIATION:
Living in the Shadow of Chornobyl

Richard Stone

MINSK, BELARUS, AND KYIV, UKRAINE--Fifteen years after the world's worst nuclear accident, the entire population of Ukraine and Belarus--human and animal (see p. 421)--is involuntarily taking part in a decades-long experiment on the effects of radiation. Whether people living in the shadow of Chornobyl remain at risk for health problems is a subject now under intense scrutiny. One scientist claims that the cesium-137 accumulating in the Belarus population poses a serious health threat (see p. 424); another scientist has spent the last 5 years proving that the explosion of cases of childhood thyroid cancer in Belarus is attributable to massive exposure to radioactive iodine (see p. 425). And at Chornobyl's epicenter, an international effort is about to embark on an unprecedented engineering project that aims to prevent further release of radionuclides from the sarcophagus that was built to contain the lethal remnants of the ruined reactor (see p. 422).

Read the Full Text


THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
ret/PTC1 and ret/PTC3 in thyroid tumors from Chernobyl liquidators: comparison with sporadic tumors from Ukrainian and French patients.
J Di Cristofaro, V Vasko, V Savchenko, S Cherenko, A Larin, M D Ringel, M Saji, M Marcy, J F Henry, P Carayon, et al. (2005)
Endocr. Relat. Cancer 12, 173-183
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »


To Advertise     Find Products

Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)