25 Years Since Chernobyl: Europe’s Radioactive Wild Boars, Reindeer, Mushrooms, Lichen, & Truffles to Name Just a Few

On the evening of April 26,1989 at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant located in the Republic of the Ukraine, a devastating accident occurred – the equivalent in toxicity of 400 Hiroshima bombs. Radioactive isotopes, plutonium, strontium-90, iodine-131 and caesium-137, were suddenly released into the air from the melt down of Reactor Number Four. Carried by the winds and deposited by spring rains, much of the caesium-137 travelled westward over southern Poland, the Czech Republic, Austria, and onto southern Germany and northward to the upper reaches of Scandinavia and across to the north-western sheep farming regions of the United Kingdom.

And today, 25 years later – radioactive levels are still at a high in these particular regions of Europe’s wild plant and game reserves. Today thousands of wild boars shot by Bavarian hunters are still excessively radioactive – unfit for human consumption – only to be thrown by the wayside and set fire to in the hopes of reducing radioactive contamination elsewhere in the forests for wild boars feed on mushroom and truffles which concentrate radioactivity.

And in the Lapland regions of Norway, Sweden, and Finland, the indigenous Sami people have had to cope with contaminated reindeer meat as well – for reindeer eat lichen which is very sensitive to radioactivity – storing it like a sponge – much the way truffles and mushrooms do. And in parts of Wales, hundreds of Welsh farmers are still living with rigorous safety test restrictions on their sheep herds who graze on radioactive soil. Indeed, there are estimates that it will take a 100 years before the total radioactive levels in the whole of Europe go down to pre-catastrophic levels.

In the meantime, there are certain natural foods and flavorings that do help detoxify radioactive build-up in the human body – in addition to iodine and spirulina supplements – the best foods are seaweed, kelp, miso, brown rice, garlic, ginger, onions, broccoli, beets, olive oil, green and black tea, rosemary, leafy greens, apples, citrus fruits, pumpkins, alfalfa sprouts and bee pollen.

As for our favorite pets, studies have shown that aloe vera reduces radiation sickness in animals and is an effective topical treatment for animal radiation burns.

But for now, the verdict is still out regarding the long-term effects of radiation exposure on humans and animals – indeed the focus for the next few years will be developing new types of technology that will be able to quickly assess the amount of radiation thousands of sufferers will have contracted after a radiological disaster. For no two radiation victims are exactly alike.