Reply #41: And?

[hunter]

"Two recent studies have reported, although with some controversy, that germline mutation rates were increased in humans and voles living close to Chernobyl, but little is known about the viability of the organisms affected."

Meanwhile, a great deal is known about the effects of other human activities on wildlife.

I'm not saying radioactive pollution is good, only that wildlife is better off now that humans are excluded from this environment.

In comparison to the environmental impacts of high-input industrial scale agriculture or coal mining the impacts of the Chernobyl accident are surprisingly mild, and seem roughly comparable to problems such as agricultural runoff, especially things like selenium concentration:

The National Irrigation Water-Quality Program has Identified Several Areas with Elevated Concentrations of Selenium

Selenium is an element required in trace amounts for human and animal health, but it can cause health problems for livestock, wildlife, and humans when ingested in higher-than-required concentrations. Incidences of mortality, birth defects, and reproductive failure in waterfowl were discovered at Kesterson National Wildlife Refuge, San Joaquin Valley, California, by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) in 1983 (Presser, 1994). These problems were attributed to elevated concentrations of selenium in irrigation drainage that discharged to the refuge. Because of concern about possible adverse effects from irrigation drainage on Department of the Interior (DOI) projects elsewhere in the United States, the DOI organized scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), USFWS, Bureau of Reclamation (BOR), and Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) to form the National Irrigation Water-Quality Program (NIWQP). The objectives of the program are to investigate DOI-managed lands for potential contamination related to irrigation drainage, conduct studies to identify the problems, investigate methodologies to remediate those problems, and implement remediation plans (U.S. Department of the Interior, 2002).

Reconnaissance Studies directed by the NIWQP investigated 26 areas during 1986-95 (Engberg and others, 1998). Nine of these areas were further studied through NIWQP Detailed Studies. The completed Detailed Studies identified five areas with problems of sufficient magnitude to require further study or remediation:

• Middle Green River basin of Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming (fig. 1),
• Kendrick Reclamation Project Area near Casper, Wyoming,
• Gunnison River/Grand Valley area of western Colorado,
• Stillwater National Wildlife Refuge near Carson City, Nevada,
• Salton Sea in southern California near the border with Mexico.

http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/fs-031-03