Long Live Slavutych: Mortality Profile of Population Evacuated from Chornobyl Exclusion Zone
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Prypiat died – long live Slavutych: Mortality profile of population evacuated from Chornobyl exclusion zone France MESLE and Svitlana PONIAKINA Introduction City of Prypiat was founded in 1970 with a purpose to accommodate population working on the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant (CNPP). Along with its prime goal as being home to nuclear power plant's employees, Prypiat had been viewed as a major railroad and river cargo port in northern Ukraine 1. Contrary to common delusion city of Chornobyl had never anything to do with a nuclear plant - it was a small town situated 18 km away from the plant; however it gave its name to the district where plant is located and therefore to the plant itself. For now Chornobyl district is abolished and included in Ivankiv district 2. On the other side city of Prypiat founded within 2 km from CNPP is the one that was the most hit by the accident. It was an elite town representing a concentration of high-skilled engineers and industrial workers of Soviet Union. Prypiat could boast a developed social infrastructure and high- level living conditions; it was on the list of cities with a right for primary supply with goods and products, the right equally possessed by capital cities. Prypiat was an exemplary city of Soviet Union and living in it was a privilege. The population of Prypiat was very young, on its third represented by children. The average age of population before the accident was 26 years 3. On that fatal Saturday when in the early morning (at 1:24) a reactor exploded, a city being ignorant celebrated 16 weddings. At its age of 16 years Prypiat died due to the accident on one of four reactors of Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant, the biggest anthropogenic catastrophe of humanity. The evacuation of Prypiat’s 49.4 thousand of inhabitants lasted five days. Initially people were sent to sanatoriums, resort complexes and to their relatives. However, in October of the same year an order for construction of a new city to accommodate evacuated from Chornobyl exclusion zone population was signed, and in spring of 1988 first inhabitants moved into Slavutych. The population of Slavutych is around 24 thousands of people out of which 8 thousands were still children in 1986. Paradoxically as Prypiat was Slavutych is as well young and attractive for its living conditions. First, the best architects of the Soviet Union were working on its fast construction; one can find typical districts of eight Soviet republics there, such as Estonian, Georgian, Armenian, Lithuanian etc. neighbourhoods. Ten programs aiming to protect vulnerable population, to fight drug and alcohol addiction, to rehabilitate handicapped, to developed education and science have been launched. There are two universities in Slavutych - branches of Kyiv and Chernihiv universities. Moreover, for the sake of its development Slavutych was clamed a zone of free trade. And lastly, similarly to Prypiat most of Slavutych inhabitants are still those working on the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant. 1 www.ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Припять _( город ) 2 www.pripyat.com 3 www.prypiat.com Slavutych is physically located in Chernihiv and not in Kyiv region (where the power plant is found) though administratively it is subordinated to Kyiv region. It is 50 km away from the Chornobyl Power Plant. After a disaster on one of reactors, the rest three continued working until the complete closure of CNPP in 2000. During all these years half of workable population of Slavutych (around 9 thousands) were commuting every day crossing region borders and river of Dnipro to their work. The closure of the nuclear plant, which was a source of 85% of city’s revenues, was a big shock for population. Around three thousands has left a city, however another three thousands are still working their as liquidators, observers of containment and scientific researchers in the framework of program “Shelter”. Therefore, in this work we would like to take a look at the demographic profile of Slavutych population. Even though the levels of radiations are hundred-falls times lower now than at the moment of catastrophe the pollution will remain for many years. For those working in contaminated zone a strict control of daily dozes is effectuated. Workers are careful themselves not to excess a norm as everybody is afraid to lose their work earlier then when a maximum allowed accumulated amount is achieved. Regarding lifetime exposure of CNPP‘s employees to radiation we would like to investigate mortality from major causes of death in Slavutych on the background of its neighbours and as well to compare it with the one in similar towns. 1. Statement of the problem The accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1986 was a tragic event for its victims. It caused serious social and psychological disruption in the lives of those affected and vast economic loses of the entire region. At the same time while immediate demographic loses are known (death of fireman’s, radiation sickness of 134 workers present on the site who received high doses (0.8-16 Gy), thyroid cancer reported in children and adolescents) the long-term consequences are less evident. Literature states that there is no scientific evidence of increases in overall cancer incidence or mortality rates that could be related to radiation exposure two decades after the accident. “It is impossible to assess reliably, with any precision, numbers of fatal cancers caused by radiation exposure due to the Chernobyl accident ... Small differences in the assumptions concerning radiation risks can lead to large differences in the predicted health consequences, which are therefore highly uncertain” – is a conclusion of the Chernobyl Forum 2003-2005. There is a tendency to attribute increases in the rates of all cancers over time to the Chernobyl accident, but it should be noted that increases were also observed before the accident in the affected areas (UNSCEAR, 2008). On the other side Ella Libanova (2007) argues that the increase in mortality of the affected population in post-soviet period was larger than among the rest of Ukrainians. Childhood thyroid cancer caused by radioactive iodine fallout is one of the main health impacts of the accident. According to the data of the center of medical Statistics there is a tendency for increasing in the incidence rate of thyroid cancer – among evacuated population it increased by four times in 1998-2004 comparing to 1980-1989 (Libanova 2007). Apart from the dramatic increase in thyroid cancer incidence, there is no clearly demonstrated raise in the incidence of solid cancers or leukaemia due to radiation in the most affected populations (UNSCEAR, 2008). Officially the increase in leukaemia incidence due to radiation is recognized only for liquidators of the accident (out of 110, 645 liquidators there were registered 101 cases). It should not be neglected however that the accumulated radiation might cause adverse movement even 40 years after the exposure. Among other problems there are some testimony of increased prevalence of digestive system diseases, particularly chronic liver cirrhosis and hepatitis, and an increase in psychological problems among the affected population. The later was caused by the panics and anxiety and compounded by the depression, which followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. One of UN study concludes that relocation and hand-outs have caused more illness than radiation (Brown, 2002). Finally, the sociological researches regarding the consequences of Chornobyl accident testified that more than half of total Ukrainian population does believe that the catastrophe caused a bad impact on their health. The scientific study of demographic problems in regions suffered from the accident is little developed. The main obstacle to it is data problems as studying units are very small, numbers are insufficient for solid conclusions and available coefficients are only crude. This analysis tend to identify weather mortality profile of population of town of Slavutych differs from the one of neighbouring areas as well as of similar to it but remote towns using all available information. 2. Data In order to compare situation in such little town as Slavutych is with adequate benchmarks we needed data for administrative subdivisions and settlements. This is a third level of Ukraine’s territorial division represented by 490 districts and 170 cities. Luckily Slavutych appears in the data and so we possess two important pieces of information. First is a census data for the end of 2001. Population is available by single-year age groups and sex. This is the most precious information we have. Second, we have total number of deaths and deaths specified by medical causes and by place of residence, however with no age and sex specification. Hence, we deal only with total for both sexes numbers. The inconvenience comes from the fact that data by causes of death is available only from 2005. Therefore, the period of analysis refers to recent years, 2005-2010, around 20 years after the catastrophe. As we want to see how the city of Slavutych appears on the background of its neighbours we decided to select all districts of three regions: Chernihivska (where Slavutych is located), Kyivska (where Prypiat was located) and Zhytomyrska oblasts (one of the most suffered) that form a northern belt of contaminated territory (Figure 1), and it makes up 70 districts (Figure 2). It should be noted, that large cities, capitals of these regions were not considered in order not to bias results. Comparison of Slavutych with neighbouring areas can give an idea whether mortality patterns are common for the entire area or does Slavutych differ in particular way. From the other side, we do know that a great deal of territory was contaminated and consequences of radiation could have been reflected on the health of inhabitants of the entire polluted zone including Slavutych.