Una comunidad de determinadas babushkas resiste en la Zona de Exclusión de Chernóbil. "Dispáranos y cava las tumbas, de lo contrario nos quedaremos" les dijeron a los funcionarios. Nadejda Gorbachenko (80) salta la alambrada para recoger setas y bayas. "Un halcón vino y se comió mi pollo, así que lo golpeé con un palo" dice Hanna Zavorotnya (78). "Yo no tengo miedo de nada. Es difícil ser vieja, pero todavía quiero vivir" dice Galina Konyushok (71), exliquidadora con cáncer de tiroides. "Vuelva usted mañana. Vamos a la fiesta".
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"it’s a fact that the soil, air and water here in what is now known as the Exclusion Zone, or Zone of Alienation, are among the most heavily contaminated on earth."
No, its actually completely untrue.
The average radiation levels in the Zone are less than many places around the world experience from natural radiation. There are a few hotspots to be sure - flakes of plutonium etc. - but the average level is similar to Dartmoor at around 30mSV/yr.
"The World Health Organization (WHO) predicts that more than 4,000 deaths will eventually be linked to Chernobyl, and it reports that thyroid-cancer rates have shot up in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia, largely among those contaminated in the weeks immediately following the accident."
The WHO originally predicted hundreds of thousands of deaths, but has had to actually pull its dire predictions back when no such event occurred. They made those predictions on extrapolation of a model that is used to decide on regulatory exposure to radiation, but has no actual basis in measured effects of low level radiation. The model is highly conservative, and laudable in that it keeps nuclear power workers very very safe - they actually have lower incidences of cancer than the general population - but it is not an accurate model of the effects of subjecting populations to moderately increased background radiation.
The official death toll from UNSCEAR is actually less than one hundred. The incidence of thyroid cancer stands at around 4000 If I remember correctly - and that is from people who were near the reactor in the first few days of the accident. I-131 decays very rapidly (and is hence highly radioactive) and ceases to be a risk after a few weeks. However in that few weeks it administers massive does to the thyroid glands if its ingested in air water or food. Thyroid cancer is highly survivable by simply removing the thyroid, and that is what those 4000 people have had done. A lifetime of thyroxine, but that's better than dying. If Iodine pills had been issued promptly there would have been no cancers.
" Toxic levels of strontium and cesium in the soil are real, but so are the tug of the ancestral home and the health benefits of determining one’s own destiny. "
Neither strontium nor caesium are toxic. They are in this case radioactive. A somewhat different thing. And they do not represent a fatal risk- as the babushkas demonstrate. They do tend to accumulate in bones yes, but there is little evidence that the low levels of them encountered have any adverse effects over even long periods.
In fact the evidence is fully consistent with recent studies that show that below a certain peak level, radiation has little effect on cells that they cannot repair. A short high dose of radiation is far more dangerous than a low steady background level. Which is why I-131 which is high level and lodges and concentrates in the thyroid is so dangerous whereas the lower levels of natural radio-potassium and carbon that are in every thing we eat are not - being relatively dispersed throughout the body.
The real news about Chernobyl, is not how many died, but how few.
#2 Interesantísimo en cuanto aprenda ingles me lo leo.
#7 De verdad que es "interesantísimo". Prueba google translate, que lo están mejorando.
Por cierto Lista de páginas recomendadas para aprender inglés
Lista de páginas recomendadas para aprender inglés
eingleses.com#8 Evidentemente era una broma. Gracias por tus sugerencias.
categoria erronea: hablan de hechos de actualidad,
Y el tejado que aparece en la primera foto es de amianto.
Y otros se quejan de un mero resfriado.
¡Dios mío!
Demostrado que la radiación es segura o por lo menos más segura que muchos humanos.