Then there's this: -
Quote:1.8. How Many People Were and
Will Be Exposed to Chernobyl’s
Contamination?
The first official forecasts regarding the
health impact of the Chernobyl catastrophe
included only several additional cases of cancer
over a period of some 10 years. In 20 years it has
become clear that no fewer than 8 million inhabitants
of Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia have
been adversely affected (Table 1.7).
One must understand that in areas contaminated
above 1Ci/km2 (a level that undoubtedly
has statistical impact on public health) there are
no fewer than 1 million children, and evacuees
and liquidators have had no fewer than 450,000
children. It is possible to estimate the number
of people living in areas subject to Chernobyl
fallout all over the world. Some 40% of Europe
has been exposed to Chernobyl’s Cs-137
at a level 4–40 kBq/m2 (0.11–1.08 Ci/km2;
see Table 1.2). Assuming that about 35% of
the European population lives in this territory
(where radionuclides fell on sparsely populated
mountain areas) and counting the total European
population at the end of the 1980s, we
can calculate that nearly 550 million people
are contaminated. It is possible to consider that
about 190 million Europeans live in noticeably
contaminated areas, and nearly 15 million in
the areas where the Cs-137 contamination is
higher than 40 kBq/m2 (1.08 Ci/km2).
Chernobyl fallout contaminated about 8%
of Asia, 6% of Africa, and 0.6% of North
America, so by similar reasoning it appears that
outside of Europe the total number of individuals
living in areas contaminated by Chernobyl
Cs-137 at a level up to 40 kBq/m2 could reach
nearly 200 million (Table 1.8).
Certainly, the calculated figures in Table 1.8
are of limited accuracy. The true number of
people living in 1986 in areas outside of Europe
with noticeable Chernobyl contamination can
be no fewer than 150 million and nomore than
230 million. This uncertainty is caused, on the
one hand, by calculations that do not include
several short-lived radionuclides, such as I-131,
I-133, Te-132, and some others, which result in
much higher levels of radiation than that due
to Cs-137. These include Cl-36 and Te-99 with
half-lives of nearly 30,000 years and more than
21,000 years, respectively (Fairlie and Sumner,
2006). The latter isotopes cause very low levels
of radiation, but it will persist for many millennia.
On the other hand, these calculations
are based on a uniform distribution of population,
which is not a legitimate assumption.
In total, in 1986 nearly 400 million individuals
(nearly 205 million in Europe and 200
million outside Europe) were exposed to radioactive
contamination at a level of 4 kBq/m2
(0.1 Ci/km2).
Other calculations of populations exposed
to Chernobyl radiation have been based on the
total collective dose. According to one such calculation
(Table 1.9) the number of people who
were exposed to additional radiation at a level
higher than 2.5 × 10−2 mSv might be more
than 4.7 billion and at a level of higher than
0.4 mSv more than 605 million.
1.9. Conclusion
Most of the Chernobyl radionuclides (up to
57%) fell outside of the former USSR and
caused noticeable radioactive contamination
over a large area of the world—practically the
entire Northern Hemisphere.
Declarations that Chernobyl radioactivity
adds only 2% to the natural radioactive background
on the surface of the globe obscures the
facts because this contamination exceeded the
natural background in vast areas, and in 1986
up to 600 million men, women, and children
lived in territories contaminated by Chernobyl
radionuclides at dangerous levels of more than
0.1 Ci/km2.
Chernobyl radioactive contamination is
both dynamic and long term. The dynamic
is delineated as follows: First is the natural
disintegration of radionuclides so that levels
of radioactive contamination in the first days
and weeks after the catastrophe were thousands
of times higher than those recorded 2
to 3 years later. Second is the active redistribution
of radionuclides in ecosystems (for details
see Chapter III). Third is the contamination
that will exist beyond the foreseeable future—
not less than 300 years for Cs-137 and Sr-90,
more than 200,000 years for Pu, and several
thousands of years for Am-241.
From the perspective of the 23 years that
have passed since the Chernobyl catastrophe,
it is clear that tens of millions of people, not only
in Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia, but worldwide,
will live under measurable chronic radioactive
contamination for many decades. Even if the
level of external irradiation decreases in some
areas, very serious contamination in the first
days and weeks after the explosion together
with decades of additional and changing conditions
of radioactivity will have an inevitable
negative impact on public health and nature.
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