GERIRAD: Vivre dans des zones contaminées: gestion du risque radiologique

• Research unit: EU RFP
• Project number: 96.0077

Key words (English)

Information; education; risk; radiation protection; Chernobyl; catastrophe; social consequences;countermeasures; caesium; cycle; biological half life; interdisciplinary

Alternative project number (English)

EU project number: FI4C-CT96-0008

Research programs (English)

EU-programme: 4. Frame Research Programme - 5.2 Nuclear fission safety

Short description (English)

See abstract

Further information (English)

Full name of research-institution/enterprise:
Université de Genève
FPSE - LDES
Laboratoire de Didactique et Epistémologie des Sciences

Partners and International Organizations (English)

Department Communication, Holland University (NL), Laboratoire d'Analyse Socio-Anthropologique du Risque, Université de Caen (F), Institute of Sociology, Minsk. Rep. of Belarus

Abstract (English)

People's perception of their own health needs show differences by age and by zone. The concern is more dramatic in contaminated villages, where they express increased medical demands, as well as attention to psycho-social conditions. The burden of the precautions is obvious. The need to buy clean food and treatments, the banning of forest activities and resources creates specific economical troubles. At any place in the region, interviews revealed that people suffered. Many people are pessimistic as a consequence of the Chernobyl catastrophe. Their written answers show a dim view of future. However most of them are ready to take personal and familial responsibility.
Most people cannot describe the transfer of Caesium between the environment and man or Caesium excretion. As an attempt to define contamination, they use metaphoric comparisons. Moreover they often think that contamination is still coming from the air. People's difficulty in understanding radiation issues are not unexpected. This domain is complex, the phenomenon is usually invisible and the effects are often delayed. The probability and latency period are not accessible.
Firstly the interviews by sociologists, then the questionnaires served to identify t popular models. The most frequently used seems to be the epidemic model: radiation is compared to a kind of bacteria. It is deliberately taught with the help of official school manuals. The hygienist discourse often proposes 'solutions', for example the washing of hands and vegetables or boiling to disinfect. The radioactivity is mostly seen as dirt, dust or mud. Pupils' conceptions are similar to the contents of booklets with recommendations for people living in contaminated zones. Another popular model sees ionising rays as warriors. They are in use in children's books. The 'toxic model' is used by farmers who process contaminated mushrooms in an attempt to detoxify them, according to traditional recipes currently used for poisonous mushrooms.
The possible consequences of the epidemic model for victims are obvious: it can lead to consider that people from the contaminated area are infectious. Understanding the cycle of radionuclids is not facilitated. Radioactive decay and biological elimination of Caesium are inaccessible. Children get an aggravated conception of radioactivity, as they think that radioactivity propagates, and is transmitted from one person to another. The advice to remove the contamination from products by simply washing constitutes an obstacle in the understanding of internal contamination as well as the awareness of the actual situation. The enclosure is turning the contaminated zone into a ghetto. It is likely to worsen the stress, the difficulty in rehabilitation, to destroy the equipment and services, and diminish the opportunities to build a positive life project on the spot. In conclusion the isolation of victims could become a major concern for the future.
Internet address: http://www.unige.ch/fapse/SSE/teachers/giordan/gerirad/

References in databases (English)

Swiss Database: Euro-DB of the
State Secretariat for Education and Research
Hallwylstrasse 4
CH-3003 Berne, Switzerland
Tel. [phone]
Swiss Project-Number: 96.0077