Chernobyl was one of the largest radioactive accidents in
history. In 1986 a radioactive reactor at a plant failed and exploded causing
mass contamination. The town was immediately evacuated, but the animals
remained. Scientists are now able to study long term effects of large amounts
of radiation. The radioactive isotopes damage DNA in the animals therefore
causing mutations in their offspring. Animals were being born deformed, extra
appendages, and abnormal coloring and size. Although a lot of domestic animals
have suffered greatly, wildlife has blossomed. There is an increase of wild
horses, wolves, elk, boars, bison and many more. These animals, although highly
radioactive, have adapted to live in this harsh environment. Scientists are
still looking into the detrimental effects of the radiation to the wild
animals. I think that studying these animals is helpful so that scientists know
how radiation affects the body. This comes in handy when considering moving people back into places like Chernobyl and it can help with treatments such as chemo radiation.
https://www.thoughtco.com/chernobyl-animal-mutations-4155348
https://allthatsinteresting.com/chernobyl-animals-red-forest
I found this article interesting because I've have heard of Chernobyl and its melt down as seen some of its documentaries. Its interesting that Chernobyl had its meltdown in 1986 in the Ukraine and to this day its still radioactive. Knowing that some of the animals their have under went mutation in their DNA doesn't surprise meat all. What does surprise me is that wildlife has blossomed and that there's more animals than there ever was before. As well as some have learned to adapt to radioactivity which is very surprising to me and found it interesting.
ReplyDeleteCancer is one of the biggest problems in first world countries and most of the time we cannot link cancer to a particular cause. Knowing the insane amount of radiation spilled during Chernobyl, we safely can agree that humans should not be in this area even if the wildlife there has seemed to adapt to the environmental changes. It would be awesome if humans could adapt the way these animals did and survive in an unforgiving environment. Also, it makes sense that new species would emerge than there were before because there is a lesser amount of human interaction with the wildlife. Humans are the ones that are responsible for killing many of these species.
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