Chernobyl Article

Name: Natalie Kim and Hannah LaBrecque
Read the article, Chernobyl’s effects linger on (http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_743000/743879.stm) and answer these questions.

1. When was this article published?
On Wednesday, 10 May, 2000 this article was published.

2. Why will restrictions on some food continue in the United Kingdom and former Soviet Union for another 50 years?

Restrictions on some food continue in the UK and former Soviet Union for another 50 years because researchers have found that radioactivity levels are very high.

3. Where have high levels of radioactive caesium been measured?

High levels of the element caesium have been found in fish in Norway and Cumbria. Also in earthbound plants and lake water.

4. What happened to the levels of radioactive caesium during the first five years after the Chernobyl accident?

The caesium’s half-life rose during the first five years of Chernobyl.

5. Describe why levels of radioactive cesium are not decreasing anymore.

Radioactive caesium are no longer waning because the environment is not cleaning itself and the caesium is not totally immobilised.

6. Why is diffusion of radioactive cesium back into the environment occurring? Explain the physical principle behind this diffusion.

Radioactive caesium is spreading into the environment again because with chemical processes, there are usually back reactions. As Doctor Jim Smith says, a concentration gradient causes the diffusion to occur, which then causes the radioactivity, the water, and the soil balance, and then is sucked into the soil itself. When balance alters, the gradient levels out, and the alteration between take-up and release differs.

7. How long will the United Kingdom have to continue restrictions on sheep from the Cumbria region as a food item for humans?

The UK will have to further the restrictions on Cumbrian sheep as food for 10-15 years, which is much longer than they expected.

8. How long will forest berries, fungi, and fish from parts of the former Soviet Union remain restricted?

Forest berries, fungi, and fish from parts of the former Soviet Union will remain restricted for fifty years.

All rights reserved. Science NetLinks Student Sheets may be reproduced for educational purposes.Chernobyl’s Effects – E-Sheet Questions

Lesson Title: The Chernobyl Disaster Page 2 of 2
Name:__________________________
Now read Chernobyl Children Show DNA Changes http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1319000/1319386.st and answer these questions.

1. Who are the children that this article is about? To whom were they born?

The children this article is about are mutated children of Chernobyl. They were born to people who cleaned up the explosion.

2. What are “liquidators”?

Liquidators is a term used to refer to people of the clean up team for Chernobyl. The USSR gave the nickname to 800,000 people.

3. Why are scientists studying the children?

The scientists are studying the children because of their exposure to chemicals/waste.

4. What are the controls in this study?

The controls of this study are internal, the children of parents who were exposed to radioactivity, and external, the children of people who were not exposed.

5. Describe what scientists discovered about the children’s DNA.

Scientists found that children had unexpectedly high amount of mutations after 1986.

6. Describe the factors that may be linked to the number of DNA changes observed in children.

The factors that are connected to the number of DNA alterations are that their parents were expose to chemical debris.

Read Nuclear Energy Agency: Health Impact http://www.nea.fr/html/rp/chernobyl/c05.html and answer these questions.

1. Describe what happens to DNA, cells, and organs after low and high doses of radiation.

When DNA receives low doses of radiation it may be able to heal most of the cell, if it receives high doses then the DNA cell will most likely die. At low doses cells regenerate, but at high doses they will be destroyed and cause problems with organs.

2. Describe the acute health effects of the Chernobyl disaster.

Some acute health effects of Chernobyl disaster are immediate death from being hit by explosion, thermal burns, and coronary thrombosis. There were a total of 31 deaths post-accident. There were 499 people taken in for examination and 237 were quickly diagnosed with acute radiation syndrome.

3. Describe the chronic or late health effects of the Chernobyl disaster.

There were many diseases such as thyroid cancer that were found later on.

All rights reserved. Science NetLinks Student Sheets may be reproduced for educational purposes.

Conversation of the People

Notes:

• Animals are being endangered from drugs, such as vultures and wild dogs
• Preserving biodiversity for its own sake is not an effective conservation strategy
• We need to focus on protecting ecosystems, because it can be vital to human health
• Saving sites will preserve biodiversity
• Hot spots are very important to protect because they have high plant and animal diversity
• We
  need to identify threatened areas with high plant diversity and protect
  them -the usual tactics are establishing national parks or reserves
• It is key to protect communities and habitats-they typically house endangered species
• many different ecosystems, such as wetlands and mangroves, protects people from lethal storms and weathers
• some
  governments and the public are increasingly trying to create efforts to
  preserve biodiversity as elevating the needs of plants and animals
• The hot spot phrase is not succeeded in capturing the public imagination or interest
• A recent survey showed that only 30% of Americans have heard the term biodiversity
• Many of the world’s least diverse regions are proven to be important seasonal homes, migratory stops or nesting sites
• countries with harbor life raft ecosystems are conservation priorities
• Ecosystem services are provisioning, regulating, cultural, and supporting
• Critical and endangered habitats need to be protected
• Conservation and human needs need to be aligned to help protect the environment and biodiversity
• Conservation needs principles to guide it
• humans are threatened when ecosystems and natural cycles break down
• our environment will consist mainly of human-influenced systems
• conservation and social issues don’t have many ties so it is hard to get public support to help
• we need to protect the natural water and also wildlife
• Poor
  farming and logging practices in the vicinity of the condor rejected
  area because of the new income it had serve and farm animals grazing too
  close to stream and river channels are the culprits.
• Because
  our environment will consist mainly of human-influenced systems,
  biodiversity protection must be pursued in the context of landscapes
  that include urban centers, intensive agriculture, and managed forests
  and rivers, not just nature preserves.
• Ironically, protected areas will most likely need to be intensely supervised to retain their “wildness.”
• “DUST
  from degraded grassland ecosystems in sub-Saharan Africa travels far
  afield in wind, harming coral reefs, tourism and fisheries in the
  Caribbean.
• Protecting important ecosystems in one part of the world can also help people an ocean away.
• Without
  a close connection between conservation and social issues, policies
  that protect biodiversity are unlikely to find much public support.
• areas
  with a higher rate of poverty are basically more dependent on natural
  systems and their ecosystem services are severely degrading
• In 2000 the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the Nature Conservancy
  and local Ecuadorian partners established a water fund
• The fund has collected $4.9 million for supporting conservation, education and water projects upstream from Quito
  
• more than 3.5 million trees have been planted in order to reforest denuded watersheds
• "by
  eliminating wolves and mountains, people in the eastern USA triggered
  an explosion of deer and deer tick populations which has resulted in
  more than 20,000 new cases of Lyme disease annually
• they are going to use cute, iconic figures to represent
• Life Raft ecosystems are places that are stricken with poverty
  

New words or terms:

1. harbor life raft
2. hot spot
3. endemic

Summary of the article:

The article was basically about the conservation of the bio-diversities.
The article talked about how scientists look at the conversation. The
article discussed some of the different biodiversity and how we were
trying to preserve them. They talked about the different ecosystems and
what was important about them, and how the country that they were
located in, where trying to preserve them.