30 Years Since Chernobyl Contamination Remains A Silent Threat

KHOCHEVA, UKRAINE - APRIL 09: Villagers use a horse-drawn plough to plant potatoes on April 9, 2016 in Khocheva, Ukraine. The small village of Kohocheva lies in northern Ivankiv region, only 50km south of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant whose reactor number four exploded on April 26, 1986, in the world's worst civilian nuclear accident. Though Ivankiv region, an area inhabited by approximately 30,000 people, lies outside of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, it is nevertheless still burdened to varying degree with radioactove contamination from the Chernobyl disaster. Researchers have found significantly higher rates of heart rhythm disorders and immune system deficiencies among children, higher rates of circulatory disease among adults and a higher rate of death among working-age adults, especially due to cardovascular disease, than compared to Kiev region farther south and compared to years before the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. Ivankiv region also shows a 100-fold increase in thyroid cancer rates from 1985-2010. Doctor Yuriy Bandazhevsky, who has led much of the research, suspects caesium-137 released from the Chernobyl accident as the biggest threat, and says that locals get it into their bodies through food grown in the region and summer forest fires that release the radioactive isotope into the air. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)