Employees or local residents affected by the Chernobyl nuclear accident did not pass on their own genetic mutations to the next generation, according to research published April 22 in the journal Science.
The 1986 nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl, Ukraine, was the worst nuclear accident in history to date, killing 31 people but spreading radioactive fallout over a large area of Europe. Concerns about the aftermath of this event have been ongoing for more than three decades.
Recently, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) conducted a study to understand the extent to which the next generation of people who had been exposed to radiation from this accident carried genetic mutations.
Researchers analyzed genes from 130 children born to 105 pairs of parents. At least one of these parents had been directly exposed to nuclear radiation from this accident that year. They were either front-line workers assigned to the accident site or residents who were evacuated from the accident site.
The children were born between 1987 and 2002, and were the next generation born after the accident. The study showed that they did not have more mutated genes in them compared to the other cohorts.
The researchers said that everyone has more or less mutated genes, and this study is to see if these young people have more mutated genes than others of the same generation. The results showed that regardless of the amount of radiation exposure of parents and less, their children were not found any more mutations.
The consequences of excessive human exposure to radiation are complex. For example, injuries may be somewhat similar after exposure to external radiation, but if a radioactive isotope is ingested, these substances may accumulate in an organ. For example, radioactive iodine usually accumulates in the thyroid gland; radioactive strontium is similar to calcium and tends to accumulate in the bones. Different radioactive elements, at different levels of radiation, cause different damage to human DNA. Scientists still know very little about this.
One of the more serious contaminants of nuclear radiation from the Chernobyl accident is the radioactive isotope of iodine. This usually causes thyroid cancer. Some people who were exposed to the Chernobyl debris did later develop this cancer.
This study concluded that while the radiation was enough to cause serious DNA damage and even cancer in those exposed, it does not appear that the damage will be passed on to the next generation, at least not at levels that can be detected now.
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