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Comment by daeken | Hacker News Reader

A good friend's wife spent a good bit of time in Belarus recently (well, 2006-2007), primarily assisting children still affected by the Chernobyl disaster. The stories she told of kids powering through cancer would reduce most men to tears. Really amazing what's still going on over there, to this day. The incident at Chernobyl might have occurred in the Ukraine, but it was not the most affected. Sad, even if I am a highly pro-nuclear guy.

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I believe most of the radiation was literally rained down on Belarus, so they got a much much worse dose of it than the Ukraine did.

From what I've read, the Soviet government used cloud seeding to force the radiation to be rained down on Belarus because they wanted to prevent it from reaching higher populated areas like Moscow. Unfortunately, afaik, they never told the Belarusian people about it so they never had a chance of evacuating beforehand. Its pretty sad.

... children still affected by the Chernobyl disaster. The stories she told of kids powering through cancer would reduce most men to tears.

You can go to hospitals anywhere in the world and hear exactly the same stories. Kids get cancer. It sucks, but it's a fact of life. Is there any evidence that these cancers were caused by Chernobyl?

Sadly, very much so. A massive portion of the radiation went into Belarus, and they're still dealing with the results to this day, although things are finally dropping. I asked the same question, and she showed me a bunch of good evidence, although I have none on hand. Wish I did, rather than just telling a story.

Yes.

- Between 1970 and 2001 thyroid cancer incidence rates in Belarus increased from 0.4 per 100 000 to 3.5 per 100 000 among males (+775%) and from 0.8 per 100 000 to 16.2 per 100 000 among females (+1925%).

- The relative increases in areas with ‘higher exposure’ from the Chernobyl disaster exceeded those in ‘lower exposure’ areas with marked increases in thyroid cancer incidence rate ratios among both genders and in all age groups.

- The largest increases were observed among people from ‘higher exposure’ areas ages 0-14 yr at time of diagnosis, suggesting that a high prevalence of pre-existing iodine deficiency, in combination with unique susceptibility among younger people, might have contributed to potential carcinogenic exposures to the thyroid.

- The magnitude of increases observed is remarkable given the relatively limited time interval since Chernobyl ...

From: http://www.ceecis.org/iodine/04a_consequences/05_nuclear/Che...

[Edit: formatting]

Relative increases seem insane... But overall - that is still a low number. More are killed by their own parents for various reasons.

I'd really like that we put things into perspective a bit.

By comparison, the total incidence of cancers among males aged 0-14 in SEER areas in the USA (representing 28% of the population, per their website) is 149.5 per million, and for females aged 0-14 is 128.7 per million. Thyroid carcinoma is at 0.9 per million in males, and 2.9 per million in females[1]. So, while they had a higher rate than in the USA even before 1970 (4 per million for males and 8 per million for females), I would be extremely doubtful that the increase in numbers is just due to an increase in diagnosis because doctors are expecting to see cancers.

[1] http://seer.cancer.gov/publications/childhood/adolescents.pd...

Its not just cancer. A lot of children there have been born with severe[1] birth defects since.

[1] For example, heres a documentary on this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fCCVU4y7oE Note that I don't know how accurate this particular documentary is and I haven't watched it all, but I have seen others with similar content. WARNING: don't watch if you're not prepared to see severely deformed children. Its not very nice at all, really :(

>> The stories she told of kids powering through cancer would reduce most men to tears.

I've heard a few such stories myself recently. About children in Serbia and west Bulgaria, born around the depleted plutonium bombing.

I've heard of depleted uranium, but depleted plutonium is new to me.

Googling a bit, I think you mean depleted uranium, but perhaps wrote 'plutonium' because one of the problems with depleted uranium is that it is (often?) contaminated with plutonium. Just guessing.

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