Will women in Japan wear the ‘Chernobyl necklace’?
By Christina Maria Paschyn
27 April 2011 Natalia Manzurova was a 35-year-old nuclear engineer in Russia when she was assigned to be part of the clean-up crew at the Chernobyl power plant in northern Ukraine, site of the worst nuclear accident in history. Despite her training, Manzurova did not fully comprehend the dangers. On a preliminary visit to Chernobyl shortly after the disaster, she stood out amidst the slew of workers dressed in anti-contamination suits. “I arrived in a short dress and sandals–I had no idea what I was going in for,” she said. […] Manzurova began her work as a so-called liquidator at Chernobyl in the summer of 1987. Her job was to help clean up Pripyat, a city located less than two miles from the reactor whose entire population of 50,000 was evacuated after the disaster. During her four and a half years burying contaminated houses and conducting experiments on affected plants and animals, Manzurova would come to experience the noxious effects of nuclear power firsthand. She says Soviet officials monitored and studied the effects of radiation exposure on the liquidators, but that she and her colleagues were never informed of the results, nor were they given the proper tools to monitor their radiation exposure themselves. As a result of her work in the contaminated zone, Manzurova says she now bears the “Chernobyl necklace“: two scars on her neck from operations to remove cancer from her thyroid. “The left part of my thyroid gland was removed in 1990 when I was still working in Chernobyl,” she said during a recent U.S. speaking tour organized by the anti-nuclear activist organization, Beyond Nuclear. “Less than a year ago the gland was operated on and removed entirely because of tumors in the remaining part.” […] Now 59, Manzurova says she is the only living member of her 14-person team in Chernobyl. She says most of her colleagues died from cancers and illnesses due to radiation poisoning. […] Manzurova fears that Japan may now be facing a similar situation following the 9.0 earthquake and resulting tsunami that devastated the island nation’s northeastern shore on March 11. […]
While young adults and older teens have lower chance of developing thyroid cancer as a result of exposure to I-131, about 20 % of them may end upwith thyroid nodules (mostly females. So instead of wearing Chernobyl neckalce they may grow Madam's apples