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The main
economic cost of the Chernobyl explosion was from the effect the fallout
had on the agriculture. Enormous amounts of milk in Poland, Austria,
Hungary, and Sweden were made unusable by the contamination from the
radioiodine and radiocesium. Many countries across Europe had numerous
amounts of vegetation burned because of contamination. A ban on many
agricultural goods was placed in Eastern Europe. Another aspect of the agricultural impact is the eventual health effect it has with the consumption of the contaminated food. "At the animal farm at Petrovsky I was shown a suckling pig whose head looked like that of a frog: instead of eyes there were large tissue outgrowths with no cornea or pupil. 'They usually die soon after birth, but this one survived.'" Government documents made public in 1991 revealed that 47.5 tons of meat and 2 million tons of milk were produced in the contaminated areas. |
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