One way to determine what the aftermath of radioactive pollution
from the meltdown of the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan
will be is to look at what happened in Eastern Europe after
Chernobyl exploded in 1986. When talking about Chernobyl in the
July 12th edition of the New York Times, Joe Nocera notes that,
"Oddly enough, the 25th anniversary of the worst nuclear
accident in history has been marked by journalism about
animals." But he knows someone who was directly exposed to
radiation from the power plant meltdown in the Ukraine. Her name
is Maria Gawronska and she is a native of Poland who moved to
New York in 2004. Nocera writes, "She always wears a turtleneck,
even on the hottest of days." He discovered this is because her
thyroid was damaged by the radiation 25 years ago, when she was
5 years old and she has a scar there from having it removed.
Maria lived in northern Poland, more than 400 miles from
Chernobyl, but that wasn't too far away for the radiation to
reach her. Soon Soviet officials arr