Iodine-131 exposure of thyroid of Belarus population due to Chernobyl accident

Millions of inhabitancies of Republic of Belarus were exposed with 'iodine attack' due to Chernobyl accident. The formatted thyroid doses mainly by iodine-131 led to an unprecedented increase of thyroid cancer incidence, especially among the children and adolescences. The using of the method of radioecological modeling with taking in to account the regional specific of conditions of contamination has done the wide-scale reconstruction of thyroid dose of Belarus population. The estimations of average thyroid doses were carried out for more than 9,5 millions persons at 19 age groups (for 2 403 317 children and adolescences at 0 - 18 years and 6 929 109 adults) which resided in 23 325 settlements at the time of Chernobyl accident. An ecological study of Belarus and Russian areas with relatively good dosimetry resulted in a linear dependence of the excess risk in the range 0.05 to 3 Gy of thyroid doses, therefore 1 061 390 persons under 18 at the time of Chernobyl accident have to be taken under long-term medical follow-up. (Authors)