Hacker News Reader

Comment by max002 | Hacker News Reader

I was born before explosion in Czarnobyl, roughly 600km away from Czarnobyl (that's the original name).

It was 28th April 1986, early morning in Poland. The radiation monitoring station in Mikołajki, Mazury area (north-eastern region of Poland - which is much further north) showed that the radioactivity in the air was 550,000 times higher than the day before. The radioactive cloud from Chernobyl had travelled to Poland.

We all had to take iodine pills for long time. I guess if you never lived close to nuclear accident place you just can't understand it.

And if 550,000 times standard radiation doesn't speak to you then go and take deep breath in Chernobyl, and stay there for a bit. Wish you good luck and quick death cause cancer from damaged cells will come 100%.

View on HN

Depending on radiation level this may be actually healthy:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3526327/

The cancer mortality ratios (CMRs) in Poland in high and low level radiation areas were analyzed based on information from national cancer registry. Presented ecological study concerned six regions, extending from the largest administration areas (a group of voivodeships), to the smallest regions (single counties). The data show that the relative risk of cancer deaths is lower in the higher radiation level areas. The decrease by 1.17%/mSv/year (p = 0.02) of all cancer deaths and by 0.82%/mSv/year (p = 0.2) of lung cancers only are observed.

I know, there's a smiliar experiment in states. But you're providing wrong data, from wrong years and for insiginificant amounts of radiation, nothing compare to fallout from atomic accident.

The original statistical data for each set from 1 to 6 (GUS 2011; RAP 2005; AGP 1995; MRP 1995);

the accident was in 1986. and you wont find any data on it because russians who in reality ruled poland then didnt care.

Is there a claim in my post you're trying to refute? I didn't see any.

Your original post was inaccurate at least in this point:

> We all had to take iodine pills for long time.

Now lets make a claim - living in high background radiation city in Poland is much worse than Chernobyl exposure even if we look at 1 year period.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16575762/

In Poland the mean effective equivalent dose resulting from Chernobyl accident was 932 microSv and is close to the limited dose permitted in Poland, equalling 1 mSv/year.

So according to original article I cited (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3526327/) living in Jelenia Góra (4.75mSv/year) with high background radiation is ~3 Chernobyl doses per year every year vs living in Świnoujście (1.06mSv/year).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com