Still under Chernobyl's shadow

Full impact still unknown; experts jailed

One problem is determining the extent of the public health threat posed by radiation. A report issued by the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) last year calculated that only 50 deaths can be attributed to the accident, with perhaps 4,000 more in years to come.

The governments of both Belarus and Ukraine dispute that finding and say the death rate has been much higher among the 2 million then-Soviet citizens who were officially classed as "victims of Chernobyl."

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"Our studies indicate that 34,499 people who took part in the cleanup of Chernobyl have died in the years since the catastrophe," Nikolai Omelyanets, deputy head of Ukraine's National Commission for Radiation Protection, told journalists last month. "All the information we sent to the IAEA has been ignored for some reason."

Other groups, including Greenpeace, have put the number closer to 100,000.

Oleg Gromyko, head of Belarus's tiny Green Party, says no serious public health studies have been done on people living in the exclusion zone around his home city of Gomel, which includes Svetilovichi. "The damage to this region has hardly been counted yet," he says. "We do not have scientific data, but all anecdotal evidence suggests it's very bad." In his own family, four of his six siblings died young - three of cancer, he says.

"We were all exposed to Chernobyl, but here I am, hale and hearty. That shows you how hard it is to get a handle on this," Mr. Gromyko explains. "Since there is no solid information, people don't know what to believe."

One group of Belarussian scientists who did try to accurately measure the effects of long-term radiation exposure in the population was broken up four years ago by the authorities and its leaders imprisoned. According to a report issued by Yakovenko's group, the group - experts with the nongovernmental Institute of Radiation Security in Minsk - had angered the government by publishing radiation figures for many Belarussian areas that were far above official estimates.

Radioactive food

Mr. Gromyko, whose now-abandoned ancestral village of Gromyki is deep inside the exclusion zone, says much of the land that was declared too radioactive for use is being steadily turned back into farmland under orders from Lukashenko. He points out two large dairy farms inside the zone near Svetilovichy which appear to be operative.

Mr. Sevchuk, of the official KomChernobyl, insists that all foodstuffs are carefully controlled, and that little contaminated produce makes it to market.

"What we can control, we do control," he says. "We have 2,000 laboratories all over Belarus that are constantly checking for violations. We still have problems, but we are managing."

But Yakovenko says that radiation in foodstuffs is growing as farmland is brought back into production. The authorities have gotten around this, he says, by raising the maximum level of radiation allowed in food four- or five-fold. "Statistics from this government can't be trusted," he concludes.

None of this makes much difference to Malinovsky, who grows most of the food his family consumes, and never bothers to have it checked for radiation.

"A few years ago, officials came around and told us to get rid of our cows, that drinking the milk was very dangerous," he says. "But what are we supposed to do? There's no work around here, so we have to live on our means. Maybe the food is radioactive, but we still need to eat."

• Olga Podolskaya contributed reporting from Minsk. Material from the wires was also used.

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