Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment (Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences) People of a certain age remember 1986 and the Chernobyl disaster, the  “worst technogenic accident in history.” Desdemona was playing tennis with a friend as the radionuclide cloud passed overhead. Maybe it was coincidence, but both of us had lymph nodes that were swollen for days; they were little hard nodules like Des hasn’t experienced before or since. In 1991, Desdemona read Chernobyl: Insight from the Inside by Vladimir M. Chernousenko, which was very expensive and difficult to acquire. It’s a first-hand account by the head of the group that was sent to the site by the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, and it’s the second most depressing volume in Desdemona’s library (the first is Mass Rape: The War Against Women in Bosnia-Herzegovina). Fast-forward to 2009, and the trends that could only be hinted at in 1991 have been confirmed: Chernobyl was a catastrophe for human and animal health. The grim data are collected in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences volume, Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment. Hundreds of studies outline the scale of the event, with morbidity and mortality data collected in convenient graphs and tables. It’s your one-stop-shop for hemispheric radiation catastrophe. Normally, it sells for $121.50 at Amazon, but for an unknown length of time, it’s FREE AT WILEY.COM. UPDATE: The trial window seems to have closed, but you can download the study from here: Yablokov Chernobyl book [4.4MB pdf]. (h/t Osha Gray Davidson) UPDATE: apparently, you can’t just click the link but instead must follow this workflow:

Go to: http://www.nyas.org/Publications/Annals/Detail.aspx?cid=f3f3bd16-51ba-4d7b-a086-753f44b3bfc1 Then click on “Full Text.” Then, under “Annals Access,” next to “Nonmembers,” click on “View Annals TOC free.” This will allow you, chapter by chapter, to download and/or view the entire text of the book, for free.

Thanks to Nuclear Free Planet for the tip. Chernobyl Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment via If You Love This Planet