Forests around Chernobyl aren’t decaying properly (2014)
> including some [wild boar] bagged as far away as Germany—continue to show abnormal and dangerous levels of radiation.<p>This really needs to stop. I remember doing the calculation a few years back due to another HN post (and the German obsession around boar) and you'd need to eat roughly 0.55lbs (0.25kg) of the most radioactive boar you could find every day or 3lbs (1.4kg) of the median. That is to just hit EU radiation limits, not to hit a level where you're at risk. This also doesn't include that you'll heal over that period. The problem here is that if you're eating this much pork every day you're going to be at far higher health risks for heart disease than radiation sickness. Recommended is not more than 50g/day or 0.05kg/0.11lbs. For reference, Germans eat about 55kg of meat a year, so you'd be eating 220x the average German if you had a craving for the most radioactive boar and ate it exclusively. Germans used to eat more meat, and especially pork, and these stories have just done wild damage to the population. Especially because farm pigs aren't affected. But a side benefit is that less Germans are dying of heart disease, so I guess that's nice.<p>As for the forest, you may notice if you google it you'll see this story limited to 2014 and maybe a BBC article from 2019 as a result of the HBO series. [0] You may be interested to know that wildlife flourishes in Chernobyl and this is almost an accidental nature preserve. Life is shorter, yes, but life is flourishing and wildlife populations are far higher now than they were prior to the disaster. Population levels are similar to uncontaminated regions. It is really a fascinating area to understand from a biological perspective (same with Fukushima, which has similar results). When you dig into these they really challenge your preconceived notions of radiation damage. There is danger, don't get me wrong, and I don't think people should go inhabit these places just yet. But neither are these places dying. They're more like the post-apocalyptic movie scenes where animals and plants take over. There's far more nuance and interesting things happening in these regions and I wish we'd discuss these from a more holistic perspective.<p>[0] <a href="https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190701-why-plants-survived-chernobyls-deadly-radiation" rel="nofollow">https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190701-why-plants-survi...</a>