What about community pollution disasters that involve ionizing radiation? How have ionizing radiation, nuclear power accidents, and nuclear bomb testing affected children and their families around the globe?

The book "Silent Scourge: Children, pollution, and why scientists disagree" covers the behavioral and psychological effects of pollutants that we commonly encounter in the environment. The book is written by Colleen Moore (Professor of Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Chapter 6 covers community pollution disasters including Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and the relocation of the Bikini Islanders from their home during the 1950s. Link tom my page on Children and Pollution here.
Here is are some excerpts from the sections on Chernobyl and on Three Mile Island in Chapter 6.
The following is Copyright 2003, Oxford University Press, all rights reserved.

...on Chernobyl
"Effects on Children’s Psychological Development
    There are at least two reasons to expect that prenatal exposure to radiation would affect children’s intellectual development. First, if the pregnant mother and fetus are exposed to enough radioactive iodine to affect thyroid function, lowered thyroid function can affect the cognitive development of the child. Second, prenatal exposure to ionizing radiation is recognized to be one cause of mental retardation. For the Japanese atom bomb survivors, as the estimated fetal radiation dose increased the likelihood of children being born with severe mental retardation increased, especially for radiation between the 8th and 25th week of gestation (Otake & Schull, 1998; Schull et al., 1990; Yamazaki & Schull, 1990). In addition, as estimated fetal radiation increased, the children’s IQ scores and school performance also decreased on average (Otake & Schull, 1998).
<4>The Minsk Study
A group of researchers in Minsk, Belarus, gave IQ tests to children whose mothers were pregnant at the time of the accident and living in an area of Belarus that was radiation contaminated (Kolominsky et al., 1999). The children were compared to children selected to be comparable in socioeconomic background, but who were living in a part of Belarus that did not receive fallout from the reactor accident. The exposed children and their families had also been relocated to the Minsk area when they were about 5 years old. Even though the sample size was relatively small (138 exposed and 122 unexposed), fewer exposed than unexposed children scored average or higher, and more exposed children scored in the range of borderline mental retardation (IQ score 70 to 79). The differences between the groups were smaller when they were re-tested at age 10, but the average IQ score of the radiation exposed group (93.7) was still significantly lower than the average IQ score of the of the unexposed group (96.1). There was not a significant relationship between IQ score and week of gestation at which exposure ..."

on Three Mile Island...
"Technological failures pose unique psychological problems because they involve a loss of societal control and a loss of trust in authority and experts (see Baum & Fleming, 1993, for an overview of the special challenges that face people coping with technological accidents). People who lived close to TMI went through a disturbing crisis in which accurate information was unavailable (Flynn, 1988). Not only was there the risk of exposure to radioactivity in uncertain quantities, but there was the trauma and stress of temporary evacuation, uncertainty of the outcome of the crisis, and uncertainty about how much exposure to radiation from the accident had already occurred.
    The consensus among social scientists is that this very stressful event had relatively long-lasting consequences for psychological well-being (Baum et al., 1983; Bromet et al., 1990;  Dohrenwend et al., 1981). Research showed that people from the TMI area fared worse than comparison groups on measures of stress and emotional functioning almost five years after the accident (Bromet et al., 1990). It is important to keep in mind that the possibilities of evacuation and exposure to uncertain quantities of radiation are inherent in nuclear power. Wherever there is a nuclear power plant there must be an evacuation plan and a radiation monitoring program. The potential for evacuation and the psychological impacts of an accident or other incident should be incorporated in the social impact sections of environmental impact reports. As a result of the TMI incident, social scientists know more about those impacts than before the accident.
Mothers with Preschool Children
    Mothers with preschool children experienced the most stress of any demographic group. One researcher compared TMI mothers of preschool children to others near TMI, people living...."

To read more and to visit my web page on children and pollution, click here

Chapter 1 covers lead
Chapter 2 covers mercury.
Chapter 3 covers PCBs
Chapter 4 covers certain pesticides
Chapter 5 covers the effects of noise on children's development
Chapter 6 covers community pollution disasters including Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, Love Canal
Chapter 7 covers the precautionary principle

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