The files chart many of the genetic disorders and non-cancerous diseases that continue to plague Ukraine nearly 19 years after the Chernobyl nuclear reactor meltdown spewed radioactive contaminants across much of that region.

“We’re just beginning to sort through the first six years of data that includes about 1,500 children. Some of them were exposed in utero; some were children of cleanup workers,” said John Vena, chair of the Arnold School of Public Health’s epidemiology and biostatistics department.

“We’ll look for unique identifiers in cohorts of children that will help us determine the appropriate types of studies to conduct.”

Vena and USC biostatistics professor Wanzer Drane are working with Eugenia Stepanova, a Ukrainian medical professor and clinician who personally examined many Ukrainian children exposed to Chernobyl contaminants following the disaster. Her medical notations of those examinations—many of which documented children for years following the event—could prove to be a treasure trove for scientific analysis. The notes, handwritten in Russian, are being translated and entered into a database.

The Chernobyl children’s project was initiated through a Fulbright grant that enabled Ukrainian clinical scientists to meet with Drane to plan the project. In January, Stepanova visited USC with Marina Naboka of the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences and Vitaliy Vdovenko, a Ukrainian physician in charge of data translation. Mariana Toma-Drane is USC’s first doctoral student on the project.

One of their goals is to assess the risk of non-cancer outcomes for those who were exposed to different levels of Chernobyl contaminants—from relatively low background levels to the mega-doses received by residents of Narodichy, a town near Chernobyl. Findings from their studies could help Ukrainian health officials provide better long-term health monitoring of affected individuals. An estimated 3.1 million Ukrainians live in areas contaminated by the 1986 disaster.

“Clinicians at the children’s hospital there have seen a lot of dysfunction in every organ of the body,” said Drane, who will return to Ukraine in July to finish gathering data for the project.

With the Ukrainian scientists and other USC researchers, Drane plans to develop a joint proposal for larger studies for potential sponsorship by the National Institute for Environmental Health or the Department of Defense. The project currently is supported by USC’s School of the Environment and Research and Health Sciences division.

An earlier study by Ukraine’s Stepanova conducted with Israeli researchers compared children born to clean-up workers before and after the event and found a remarkable rise in DNA mutation rates.

“Many of the children who were exposed [in 1986] now are grown and having children of their own,” Stepanova said.

In a related study, USC biological sciences professor Tim Mousseau is using a grant from USC’s Environmental Research Initiative Committee to study human, bird, and insect populations affected by Chernobyl.

“The area around Chernobyl is a case study for the non-lethal effects of chronic, low-dose radioactive exposure,” Mousseau said. “It’s akin to what might happen if a ‘dirty’ bomb were detonated, spreading low-level contamination far and wide.”

With support from the Samuel L. Freeman Charitable Trust, Mousseau has been studying bird and fly populations, which have processed through many generations since the 1986 disaster. Mousseau’s team includes USC researchers in medicine, chemistry, public health, and biology, as well as several of the Ukrainian researchers involved in the Chernobyl children project. In addition, scientists at the Savannah River Ecology Lab and from France and Scotland are participating.

“The annual survival rate for barn swallows around the plant is zero; it’s about 10 to 20 percent in the zone five to 10 miles around the plant,” Mousseau said. “The normal annual survival rate is 35 to 45 percent.”

Anomalies such as patches of white feathers, deformed tails, and sperm deformities are rampant.
For human populations, the life expectancy among those living near the Chernobyl plant continues to decline. Nearly 90 percent of Chernobyl’s clean-up workers have developed radiation-induced cataracts or other vascular pathologies of the eye.

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