In the photo: a newborn foal with eight hooves. Kiev Museum of Chernobyl
Ukraine is pursuing a policy of gradual settlement of the Chernobyl territories, although the quality of life of its population is already declining. Kiev geneticist Vyacheslav Konovalov calls for this to be done with extreme caution. According to him, radioactive mutations in the country are just beginning.
For a quarter of a century, the pain of the Chernobyl victims has subsided somewhat, and the supporters of nuclear energy again assure the society of the need to build nuclear power plants - the most economical, efficient and safe ones. However, there are other scientists - those who, overcoming the resistance of the authorities, continue to study how the Chernobyl disaster continues to affect the biosphere. One of these researchers is a Kiev geneticist, professor at the National University named after TG Shevchenko Vyacheslav Konovalov. At one time, he collected a rare collection of mutants that were born after the accident. Today she can only be seen in photographs. Some of them are on display at the Kiev Chernobyl Museum.
Physically, this collection no longer exists. It was destroyed, despite the clear scientific value of the exhibits. The scientist collected them at his own peril and risk, overcoming the opposition of all structures that were not interested in making the truth about the Chernobyl explosion generally known.
Shortly after the disaster, Professor Konovalov moved to Zhitomir, where he headed a department at the Agricultural Institute. For several years, with the help of students, he collected the embryos of mutant animals that were born after the accident.
The scientist was helped by those who were instructed to interfere - workers of the regional party committee, policemen, KGB officers. Sometimes Vyacheslav Sergeevich spoke frankly with many of them: imagine that you have a grandson with an anomaly! People thought about it and often understood that he had no idle interest. Of the 25 districts of the region, in ten he received support. The children of the five district leaders had problems not only related to radiation, but in general with the environment.
The geneticist placed a colony of fruit flies in an ampoule with air taken in an area with a radius of tens of kilometers from the nuclear power plant. Flies manage to leave 42 generations a year, so for a year Konovalov studied mutations of such duration that in humans would correspond to about 800 years. In addition to radioactive substances, he added vodka, coffee, exhaust gases, and poisons to fruit flies. Already in the third generation, flies showed anomalies: some insects were born without legs, others without wings, others with colorless eyes …
The scientist came to the conclusion: radiation does not act by itself, but together with other pollution factors. The environmental situation in Ukraine and before the accident at the nuclear power plant was difficult: chemical and bacteriological pollution accumulated over the years. A newborn colt with eight hooves could, of course, appear without an explosion. But after the accident, the frequency of birth of freaks has doubled or tripled. All the unfavorable factors that existed before the accident were sharply activated due to radiation. The effect of their mutual reinforcement worked.
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When, after the war, the standard of the maximum permissible radiation for a person was calculated, the maximum dose was taken at 10 roentgens. But then there were significantly fewer other environmental problems. Therefore, now scientists believe that even a small concentration of radiation affects the hereditary apparatus. It inhibits the smallest defects in DNA strands.
Each woman has about 200,000 eggs. Usually up to 10% of them are with anomalies. After the accident at the nuclear power plant, this figure rose to 20%. Until the spring of 1986, 10% of all marriages concluded in Ukraine were sterile, now - 22%. According to Konovalov's statistics, the frequency of mutations in newborns in Ukraine is 25%, while in the world it is 8%.
In one of the photographs there are strange spruces: they are "bald" and knotty about a meter and a half from the ground, and higher they are dense green, and the needles are bright and the needles are twice as long as those of ordinary trees. The author of the picture, professor-radiobiologist Anatoly Bolokh, has been studying Chernobyl mutant plants for many years. You can wrap a school notebook with a linden leaf. Plantain stretches above the knee.