In the Chernobyl disaster zone, life — and death — is still bleak
Twenty-five years after the Chernobyl nuclear reactor spewed its deadly shower of radioactive isotopes, the Russian village of Stary Vyshkov, home to post-Soviet refugees, is still paying the price.
Reporting
from Stary Vyshkov, Russia — After Svetlana Ivanova and her husband
moved to this village in southwestern Russia 17 years ago, they laughed
when they found out what locals called the $4 monthly payment for living
in the contaminated Chernobyl zone: funeral money.
Then one warm spring afternoon three years ago, her husband, Pyotr Ivanov, came home from a job-seeking trip to Moscow, put on a clean white shirt, stepped out into the garden "for a smoke" and hanged himself.
"I remembered this sad joke when I buried my husband," she said. "I don't think the benefits he got from the state over the years were enough to buy him a casket."
Ivanova, a mother of three, admitted that sometimes she wakes up in the middle of the night and thinks about killing herself too.
Then one warm spring afternoon three years ago, her husband, Pyotr Ivanov, came home from a job-seeking trip to Moscow, put on a clean white shirt, stepped out into the garden "for a smoke" and hanged himself.
"I remembered this sad joke when I buried my husband," she said. "I don't think the benefits he got from the state over the years were enough to buy him a casket."
Ivanova, a mother of three, admitted that sometimes she wakes up in the middle of the night and thinks about killing herself too.
"We all live in radioactive houses, we breathe this radioactive air, we
eat this contaminated food, we drink the polluted water," she said,
trying to hold back her tears. "We are like prisoners, like hostages
with no escape."
Twenty-five years after the Chernobyl nuclear reactor spewed the largest shower of radioactive isotopes in the history of nuclear power, this village 110 miles from the plant is still paying the price.
Stary Vyshkov yields some terrible lessons for a world spellbound by a nuclear disaster at the Fukushima plant in Japan. A tragic convergence of historic events left the village suffering not only some of the worst pollution in a contaminated region, but a plague of stress-related suicides.
Although the region is also beset by a higher-than-normal prevalence of some physical diseases, "it is not the radiation itself that makes these people sick and kills them … but it is what's going on in their minds due to this never-ending stress," said Galina Rumyantseva of the Moscow-based Serbsky Institute for Social and Forensic Psychiatry.
"They just give up any effort to go on living."
Read all...
Data: 24.04.2011
Fonte: www.latimes.com
Autore: Sergej Loiko
Twenty-five years after the Chernobyl nuclear reactor spewed the largest shower of radioactive isotopes in the history of nuclear power, this village 110 miles from the plant is still paying the price.
Stary Vyshkov yields some terrible lessons for a world spellbound by a nuclear disaster at the Fukushima plant in Japan. A tragic convergence of historic events left the village suffering not only some of the worst pollution in a contaminated region, but a plague of stress-related suicides.
Although the region is also beset by a higher-than-normal prevalence of some physical diseases, "it is not the radiation itself that makes these people sick and kills them … but it is what's going on in their minds due to this never-ending stress," said Galina Rumyantseva of the Moscow-based Serbsky Institute for Social and Forensic Psychiatry.
"They just give up any effort to go on living."
Read all...
Data: 24.04.2011
Fonte: www.latimes.com
Autore: Sergej Loiko
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