Children of Chernobyl survivors don’t carry more genetic mutations

[FfFfFfFF 58,128]

On the morning of April 26, 1986, a reactor in a nuclear power plant in what’s now northern Ukraine exploded and burned—triggering what would become history’s deadliest nuclear accident. The hellish fire belched out immense clouds of radioactive fallout that entered people’s lungs, settled on homes, fields, and livestock pastures, and infiltrated their supplies. Milk, salami, and eggs had become, in the words of one nuclear engineer, “a radioactive byproduct.”

In the years since, researchers have monitored the health of populations that lived through the Chernobyl disaster, from people in nearby towns to the “liquidators” who cleaned up and built a huge concrete sarcophagus over the site. Nearly 35 years later, an international team has taken an extensive look at the disaster’s genetic effects—and the resulting pair of studies has found reassuring new details.

Allaying long-held fears over how the disaster could affect future generations, the largest study of its kind ever conducted—published on Thursday in Science—finds no evidence that parents who were exposed to Chernobyl’s radiation passed on any excess mutations to children conceived after exposure. Researchers hope the findings will benefit other populations affected by nuclear accidents, such as those displaced by the 2011 meltdown of Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. 

“If there is a deleterious mutation, it’s going to be rare. We can’t say it’s never going to happen, but we don’t see this as a common public-health crisis,” says both studies’ senior author Stephen Chanock, the director of the U.S. National Cancer Institute’s Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics. “We think [the findings] should be reassuring.”

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/children-born-to-chernobyl-survivors-dont-carry-more-genetic-mutations

[Chic 20,830]

I guess the human body is really adept at filtering these things out generationally! Who knew? 

[dit 46,738]

Thank you God! This is such amazing news 

[DarkDance 3]

I am a Chernobyl child, I was born exactly today, one year after the disaster.

Got a mutation, nothing serious but I got surgery, cause thanks to the mutation I could have risked my life at a certain age.

Happy to read others will avoid the effect but nuclear disasters are so devastating it's hard to believe things will get better for new generations.

[Pennywise 36,080]

Now, if only we can get over the nuclear fear... 

 

It is quite possibly the cleanest, most efficient energy solution we will have to climate change. 

 

It kinda scares me, but it still is the best/cheapest/most applicable way we have right now I guess. 

[Omegahedron 356]

Intriguing. That such extreme environmental factors have no bearing on the fundamental blueprints that are passed on in meiosis.

Good news for the future generations, if they can make sure they aren't given any further exposure.

[joannester 1,270]

When visiting Chernobyl the weirdest feeling is more in the chill places like the river side, the forrest etc. It looks so normal like any other random countryside place.. so easy to forget everything you touch is toxic and staying there too long could seriously harm your health.

no wonder people were skeptical when they were told to evacuate at first. rip the brave firefighters who lost their lives that day.