The apple counters the atom
And if pectin were a remedy for the children living in the zones contaminated by Tchernobyl? Report in Bielorussia.
By Laure NOUALHAT
Saturday May 08, 2004 (Release - 06:00)
Golovtschitkaya sent special
Katia is 10 years old. As much of small girls of its age, it adores the sea, that which it saw in Caen last year in June. At that time, Katia carried 143 becquerels per kilo (Bq/kg) (1) in its body, that is to say five to six times more than the normal. Cesium-137 of Tchernobyl. Radioactive. Katia lives in Bielorussia, in Golovtchitskaya, more than 100 kilometers of the power station which exploded on April 26, 1986, eight years before its birth. However, each year, it must leave its hearth to clean its body. Because it lives in a territory contaminated by the repercussions of the nuclear catastrophe. Four times per annum, it follow a pectin cure. With its airs of small wise girl and its stringcourse with flowers as blue as its eyes, it knows only as it is because of "that", i.e. Tchernobyl, that it cannot eat mushrooms, nor bilberries of the forest.
After the explosion of the engine ukrainien, the first stage had been to evacuate the populations: 70 % of the radioactive fallout had landed on a quarter of the territory biélorusse. 135 000 people were rehoused, but two million still lives in contaminated territories. Among them, 500 000 children like Katia, exposed in a chronic way to low radiation dosage. "the children have 3 to 4 times more radiations than the adults", explains Vassili Nesterenko, director of the independent institute of measurements biélorusse Belrad, and principal distributor of the invaluable brown powder. And, because of their growth, they are more sensitive there.
The essence of the contamination is done by food. That it comes from the garden, the market or a generous nature, food (game, milk, vegetables, fish, bays and mushrooms) is contaminated by the cesium-137 which settled on the surface in wood, on the pastures and the roads. The authorities set standards well: 37 Bq/kg for the children and 370 Bq/kg for the adults, but today still milk is dangerous, i.e. except standards, in more than 300 villages " That shows that protection against radiation is still necessary", points out Nesterenko, for fear one doubts it.
Contaminated food
Three weeks during, morning and evening, Katia swallows a brownish potion at the height apple taste. A remedy which enables him to make decrease the rate of radionuclides in its organization of 60, even of 90 %. Today, Katia has nothing any more but 29 Bq/kg of body cesium mass. The miracle cure is containing pectin, principle neutral contents in certain fruits which give to their juice viscosity. Essential to the manufacture of frozen and jams, pectin is present in great quantity in currants, apple, quince, the pips and the peels. How to imagine that this polysaccharide has the property to eliminate the radioactive particles accumulated in the body? "It traps heavy metals and makes it possible the organization to eliminate them by the natural ways", explains Nesterenko. If Katia and its friends can benefit from pectin, it is thanks to this former engineer of the Soviet nuclear program.
Cataracts and chronic tiredness
Since the creation of Belrad, in 1991, it accumulates the data on the contamination of the population. To collect them, the institute furrows the battered roads of Bielorussia with its 8 mobile units: minibuses equipped with an armchair of measurement and a computer. The schoolboys and the villagers ravel on the device: a marrowy armchair behind which is attached a lead shield covering a crystal with cesium. It is him which emits a light in the presence of radionuclides. According to his intensity, one determines the quantity and the type of radioelements located in the organization. Belrad examined more than 210 000 children. In the contaminated territories, 90 % of them have a cesium rate higher than 20 Bq/kg. It is not rare to find values located between 200 and 400 Bq/kg. In Narovlya, a child had even 7000 Bq/kg.
"From 20 Bq/kg, one must protect the children, explains Nesterenko. Researchers showed that between 20 and 50 Bq/kg one had already problems of health." The researchers in question, professor Youri Bandajevski and his Galina wife, observed during nearly ten years of the thousands of children in the contaminated zones. In 2002, Galina Bandajevskaia undertook a study in the school of Valavsk. On the 85 studied pupils, only 16 had a normal health, 69 presented various symptoms of disease. "From 50 becquerels per kilo, 80 % of the children observed have an abnormal cardiac activity", affirms the pediatrist. In fact, the children suffer from diseases of old people: cardiac cataracts, problems or chronic tiredness. Youri Bandajevski showed at the time of autopsies that the bodies absorbed cesium-137 differently. The greasy liver and fabrics accumulate much less radionuclides than the heart or the pancreas. Of course, the adults also continue to pay of their life the explosion of the power station. Among the 600 000 to 800 000 men and women come from all the Republics of the ex-USSR "to clean" the contaminated zones, a third suffers from diseases having led to a total disability.
After various studies, Nesterenko believes hard as iron that pectin is a beginning of solution to eliminate the radioelements from the organization. Soixante-quatre children of the district of Gomel lived one month in a sanatorium, during which they consumed only not contaminated food. A group took pectin morning and evening; the other, a placebo. At the end of one month, the children of the pectin group saw their rate cesium-137 to decrease by 62,6 %. In the other group, the cesium dropped only by 13,9%.
No study
Problem: these studies are largely ignored by the authorities biélorusses. The pectin cures are not financed by the ministry for Health. They are with the load of Belrad and the humane organizations which support the ONG. They however do not cost well expensive: hardly 70 euros per annum and by child.
Another concern: if the scientific community doubts the cogency of the use of pectin, no study comes to raise the doubt about this question. Doctors of the world would have liked to launch a program with pectin within the framework of a programme of rehabilitation of the living conditions on the territories (the Core program), but without financing the product. "Sanofi already developed a drug containing pectin to look after lead poisoning", insists Nesterenko. The Soviet army, it, would have also used this product to look after its irradiated personnel. It wishes ardently that an international group of scientists study closely the substance. But nothing made there. With the IRSN (Institute of protection against radiation and nuclear safety), one doubts the methodological protocols of the professor. "the debate exists for a long time and I still do not include/understand why the experts do not make protocols of test", acknowledges Jacques Lochard, director of the Center of studies on the evaluation of protection in the nuclear field (CEPN), which carries out the Core program. "As if those which were able to make these protocols were convinced by advance of their uselessness."
(1) the becquerel measurement quantity of radiation emitted by a radioactive material. A becquerel corresponds to a disintegration of atomic nucleus a second. If the human body has a natural radioactivity of a few thousands of becquerels (one agrees on 8000 Bq for a person of 70 kilos), it does not contain naturally cesium-137 but potassium-40. However, the cesium exists "in fond", because of the Russian nuclear tests and American of the Sixties.