Risk of Food Consuption in the Areas Contaminated by the Chernobyl Accident. V. Tarasov, Ph.D., and L. Ageeva, Ph.D., The Institute of Sociology of the Belarus Academy of Sciences, 1/2 Surganov street, MINSK, telephone (017) 284-18-65, fax (017) 284-29-28, e-mail socio@mserv.bas net.by
The most actual problem both for people who live in the contaminated areas and for the whole population of the Republic of Belarus is the consumption of contaminated foodstuffs. This problem carries the global character due to the serious agricultural crisis and the lack of many products such as eggs, cheese and other milk products even in the capital without saying of the region and centers.
The failure of the economic policy makes the current political regime look for the extraordinary means to gain the population support. Thus there is a special program for the nearest years which concerns the rehabilitation of the Kostiukovitchi district of the region of Moguilev with the level of radiation from 5 to 15 Ci. That is these areas are considered by the central and local authorities to be safe for living and for agricultural works. They encourage also people to be back and to work here.
In fact, after the wide scale relocation at the first post-catastrophe years and at the beginning of 1990 many people are still living in the proximity of the contaminated areas and working at the State farms or keeping the personal plot. The State farms are producing the stock-breeding and plant-growing products in the contaminated areas which is spread throughout Belarus and even exported in the Ukraine and in Russia. The officials assert that these agricultural products are safe because of the severe control based on the scientifically and medically grounded norms. Thus, while the visit to the Kostiukovitchi foodstuff control station there was revealed that the products were tested for Cs-137 only. The district have no apparatus for testing Sr-90. For example, the accessible norms for milk are 111 Bq/kg, meat products (beef, mutton) - 600Bq/kg and so on. For some products (spices, honey) the consumption of which is less than 10 kg. per year the accessible levels are 10 times high than for other products.
Nevertheless, the situation with the population health is extremely sinister. There is an increase of new-born children with different pathologies. About 10 % of children suffer from chronic diseases. At the same time one may see the increase of the death-rate which was about 13% in 1996. That year the number of patients with nervous and stomach diseases increased by 5%, with psychic and endocrine system diseases including the thyroid gland increased by 6%, with malign tumors-by 23%.
The majority of the population in the clean regions and in the capital ignore what kind of products they consume. But people in the restricted areas consciously work their personal garden with the radioactive ashes and dung as the fertilizers by ignorance. People in the contaminated areas are careless and indifferent to their health. But the problem is how to keep their children health. People's salary in small towns is so poor that many of them do not afford themselves to buy children fruits and vegetables. In summer they go to the nearest forests to pick up berries and mushrooms. And though they assert they are familiar with the radioactive areas nobody may say how clean are their forest provision.
The sociological studies in the contaminated areas show that the explanation work how to reduce the risk of penetration of the radio-nuclides with the food into the human body is not effective. 65% of public interrogated in 1998 reported that they ignored how to reduce the concentration of the harmful substances in the products and 31% knew something. 73% of public in the restricted areas did not use any means to reduce the risk of growing of the radioactive agricultural products. 79,3% of respondents were not sure to consume the clean products and 83,7% stressed the impossibility of their control.
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