Nastya, from Belarus was only three years old when she was diagnosed with cancer of the uterus and lungs. According to local doctors the region has seen a huge increase in childhood cancer cases since the Chernobyl disaster.

Fallout from Chernobyl and other nuclear accidents.

 

Chernobyl is perhaps the most well known of all nuclear accidents. This happened 21 years ago – and yet the effects are still being felt in a large area around Chernobyl

 

And the effects are felt not just in and around the Ukraine – close to where it happened , but right across Europe. As this2006 report from the BBC shows, N Wales sheep are still affected by radiation from Chernobyl after all these years.

 

A few days after the world's worst nuclear accident on 26 April 1986, rain brought radiation from Chernobyl to upland areas of Wales. Weeks later, restrictions were placed on sheep and lamb movements from 5,100 Welsh farms, with 359 still affected.

 

Countryside minister Carwyn Jones said it was impossible to predict when restrictions would end . "At the moment it looks as if the restrictions will be in place for some years to come and there will be monitoring for the foreseeable future," he said. Sheep and lambs from the 359 farms still affected are tested regularly. If radiation levels fall below a certain point, they can be sold into the food chain.

 

In the US an accident at Three Mile Island in 1979 was so potentially catastrophic that the US halted their nuclear power programme. The following is an extract from Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP) a monthly journal of peer-reviewed research and news on the impact of the environment on human health. EHP is published by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences

 

Wing et al. ( 1 ) analyzed data from the area nearest the Three Mile Island nuclear installation, showing elevated cancer incidence rates 5 years after the 1979 accident. Wing et al. refute earlier assumptions that low-level radioactive emissions from the accident were too minute to produce observable effects ( 2 ). The critical analysis by Wing et al. ( 1 ) shows excess cases for all cancers combined, lung cancers, and leukemia

 

There have been many other major accidents releasing large amounts of radiation into the atmosphere...

 

The following news bulletin was published on Thursday, September 30, 1999:

 

Nuclear accident shakes Japan

 

 

 

An irradiated worker is taken to hospital wrapped in a plastic sheet. Japan is facing an unprecedented nuclear emergency after a major uranium leak. Radiation levels at the Tokaimura nuclear fuel-processing plant in north-east Japan are 15,000 times higher than normal. The authorities have warned thousands of residents near the site of the accident to stay indoors and to wash off any rain that falls on them.

 

Radiation sickness

 

Exposure to radiation can cause devastating damage to the immune system and to the tissues of the body. The effects are known as radiation sickness or syndrome. Radiation can also cause little understood changes to the body's genes, which can be manifested through the development of diseases such as cancer later in life, and possibly as birth defects in future generations. More...