30 years later, Chernobyl still tainting food

ZALYSHANY, Ukraine — Viktoria Vetrova knows the risk her four children take in drinking milk from the family’s two cows and eating dried mushrooms and berries from the forest.

But the cash-strapped Ukrainian government canceled the local school lunch program for 350,000 children last year — the only source of clean food in this village near Chernobyl.

So rural families are resorting to milk and produce from land still contaminated by fallout from the world’s worst nuclear accident three decades ago. Vetrova’s 8-year-old son Bogdan suffers from an enlarged thyroid, a condition that studies have linked to radioactivity.

“We are aware of the dangers, but what can we do?” said Vetrova, standing in her kitchen after pouring a glass of milk.

Vetrova’s family and thousands of others are caught between the consequences of two disasters: the residue from Chernob- yl and the recent plunge of Ukraine’s economy.

After the April 26, 1986, explosion and fire, the most heavily affected areas in Ukraine were classified into four zones. Residents from three of them were evacuated or allowed to volunteer for resettlement. But the village of Zalyshany, 32 miles southwest of the destroyed reactor, is in the fourth zone — not contaminated enough for resettlement but eligible for help with health issues.

Ukraine’s Institute of Agricultural Radiology says the most recent testing in the zone showed radiation levels in wild-grown food such as nuts, berries and mushrooms were two to five times higher than what is considered safe.

However, Ukraine’s economy has since been weakened by war, endemic corruption and the loss of Crimea, which was annexed by Russia. Last year, the Ukrainian government cut off paying for school lunches in Zone 4. In 2012, the government halted the monitoring of radioactive contamination of food and soil in Zone 4.