Milk in Belarus Near Chernobyl Found With High Isotope Levels

Milk residue in Belarus near the Chernobyl exclusion zone was found to have radioactive isotope levels 10 times higher than the country's food safety limit, according to an exclusive report by The Associated Press.

The milk finding was part of an AP investigation related to the 30th anniversary of the world's worst nuclear accident, and its continued ramifications.

On April 26, 1986, an explosion and reactor meltdown at the Chernobyl nuclear plant near Kiev, Ukraine forced nearly 150,000 people within an 18-mile radius of Chernobyl to be permanently relocated, leaving what amounts to uninhabitable ghost towns, according to History.com. Chernobyl was one of the world's largest and oldest nuclear power plants at the time of the explosion.

Belarus farmer Nikolai Chubenok told the AP that his cows produce up to two tons of milk a day for the local Milkavita factory which makes Parmesan cheese sold in Russia. The AP said the radioactive isotopes were found in his milk.

Milkavita officials disputed the AP's claim, saying their own test found radioactive isotopes far below safety limits.

"It's impossible," Milkavita chief engineer Maia Fedonchuk told the AP. "We do our own testing. There must have been a mix-up."

The radiation impact can be seen in other places. Pediatrician Dr. Rachel Furley told the BBC News in a report posted Tuesday that in more than a decade of work in Britain, she has treated two children with thyroid tumors.

Furley said, though, that roughly half of the 800 children assisted at her charity in the Gomel region of Belarus have developed thyroid cancer.

"We have an awful lot of palliative cancers and tumors (in Gomel)," Furley told the BBC News. "Types which we don't see anywhere else in the world."

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