Timothy Mousseau, biologist, USA
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- Written by Urs Fitze
„The radiation puts an enormous stress on the flora and fauna in the evacuation zone."
Timothy Mousseau is a biologist at the University of South Carolina in the US. He researches the effects of radiation on nature in the Chernobyl evacuation zone.
Scots pine in the evacuatin zone, probably deformed due to a radiation induced genetic malformation
"I conducted the first smaller studies in the evacuation zone at the of the 1990s. The results were clear: the radiation puts an enormous stress on the flora and fauna. But none of this can be found in the 2006 report published by the expert group on the environment of the International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA). Instead it talks about 'flourishing ecosystems'. The report says that the Ukrainian government declared the exclusion zone a wildlife habitat and found that it also looks like that. I was shocked. How can it be that an institution committed to scientific integrity displays such ignorance? I and my colleagues decided to step up our research. Once when I was outside the exclusion zone searching for fruit flies, I could hardly find any at all. It dawned on me: not only were the fruit flies gone, there were hardly any more fruits, bees and butterflies. So we began to count them and found there were far less than you would naturally expect. Bees and butterflies, as well as many other mammals, already disappear at an annual dose of 50 millisieverts. But even at a considerably lower radiation, which is still deemed acceptable for employees at nuclear power plants, the declines are high – and this applies to all living things. The deeper we delve into the matter, the clearer this picture becomes, be it in plants or animals: the higher the radiation, the more frequent the genetic damages, birth defects, reduced fertility, lower life expectancy, lower populations and biodiversity. Spiders can form only bizarre shapes with their webs, trees grow up into plant monsters, the leaves in the forest don't rot because there are hardly any living things left to take on this natural recycling. Many species have disappeared entirely. The mutations are inherited, and it looks as though they accumulate not only over the generations but also appear in populations outside the exclusion zone. Not all living things suffer to the safe extent. Some turn out to be far more able to adapt, and we can't rule out that they will gradually recover. This would make it a man-made process of selection. And that might just be the beginning since radiation-induced mutations take effect over many generations.
But the notion of nature, which knows how to help itself, remains stubborn. This was conveyed in the 2010 documentary Chernobyl: A Natural History by the French director Luc Riolon. He accompanied us over the course of several summers, but he ultimately suppressed in his film nearly everything that contradicted his thesis. The images of wild animals such as wolves or bears, which the film implied were roaming around the exclusion zone in droves, were actually shot in Germany and were used in the film without giving this information. Likewise, a highly controversial, long-refuted study, which was partly funded by the nuclear industry, on the astonishing ability of mice to adapt to radiation was given a lot of space. I can only assume that Riolon received money from the industry. We succeeded in blocking the film from being shown in the UK any more, but it can regularly be seen on German channels. In the meantime, our research is constantly threatened because the funding is a new balancing act each year.
The animals in the exclusion zone don't drink. They don't take drugs. Nor are they unemployed. Yet they're still sick, and it begins with low radiation doses. There's no reason why humans should be less affected. I'm no longer able to distinguish if I'm still a sober scientist or if I've already become an activist against forgetting and ignorance."
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The suffering of the barn swallows
