Effects of the Chernobyl disaster children of liquidators conceived after the accident, when compared to their siblings that were conceived before. However, this effect has diminished sharply over time. Soviet authorities started evacuating people from the area around Chernobyl only on the second day after the disaster (after about 36 hours). By May 1986, about a month later, all those living within a radius of the plant (about 116,000 people) had been relocated. This area is often referred to as the zone of alienation. However, significant radiation affected the environment over a much wider scale than this 30 km radius encloses. According to reports from
Effects of the Chernobyl disaster data from Kiev's two largest obstetrics hospitals. Castronovo concludes that "the lay press with newspaper reporters playing up anecdotal stories of children with birth defects" is, together with dubious studies that show "selection bias", the two primary factors causing the persistent belief that Chernobyl increased the background rate of birth defects. When the vast amount of pregnancy data simply does not support this perception as no pregnant individuals took part in the most radioactive liquidator operations, no pregnant individuals were exposed to the threshold dose. The issue of long-term effects of the Chernobyl disaster on civilians is very controversial. The