Radiation Declining, Polish Officials Say

Radioactive contamination from the damaged nuclear power reactor at Chernobyl in the Soviet Union has registered as high as 500 times normal in one area of Poland, but this is below harmful limits, and radiation is declining in most parts of the nation, government officials in Warsaw said Thursday.

The officials said that milk may be safe to drink again “in a few days” but that the Polish government will nevertheless proceed to administer protective doses of iodine solution to its 11 million children 16 years old and under, in one of the biggest public health campaigns of its kind ever undertaken.

The worry in Poland reflected apprehension throughout Europe.

Finland dispatched a DC-8 jetliner to the Soviet city of Kiev, near Chernobyl, and evacuated 72 Finns, who were tested at the Kiev airport and showed traces of radioactive iodine. The evacuees said life in Kiev appeared normal. A Geiger counter aboard the aircraft showed that radiation at Kiev airport was not alarming.

Farther west, Swedes expressed concern about radiation and voiced anger at the Kremlin’s failure to alert its neighbors. Across the North Sea in Britain, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s government found it necessary to counter mounting public anxiety that threatened the nation’s nuclear power program.

As a fringe of Soviet radioactivity crept over the Alps, Italy agreed to Soviet requests for technical assistance, access to Italian research on the effects of radiation and help from a group that Italian news reports described as experts in fighting a nuclear fire. They were expected to go the Ukraine.

In Austria, food shoppers were advised to wash all fruit and vegetables thoroughly. Children were forbidden from playing in the dirt and were warned to stay away from puddles of rainwater.

At a 90-minute news conference in Warsaw, members of a special government commission confirmed Western reports that the Soviets suffered their reactor accident last Friday or Saturday. They said the first radiation in Poland was not detected until Monday, when Sweden discovered it across the Baltic.

Jaworowski acknowledged that, overall, the contamination in Poland would lead to some additional cancer deaths during the next 25 to 30 years. But he said these would amount to no more than a small percentage of one year’s natural death rate.

Earlier, the commission had released a statement saying radiological monitoring teams across the country, including chemical warfare defense units, noted a “decisive” drop in levels of radioactive iodine, the most worrisome component of the fallout because of its effect on the thyroid glands of children.

Asked later at the news conference to give present radiation levels in Warsaw, Jaworowski cited 20 becquerels per cubic meter, an obscure unit of radioactivity that sent Western science attaches scrambling for their encyclopedias--only to discover that it cannot easily be related to more common measurements like the rem.

However, commission members said that iodine-131 accounts for 80% of the contamination. Levels are dropping because half of any given amount of this isotope decays to harmless elements every eight days.

Dr. Krystyna Bozkowa, who heads Poland’s leading pediatric and maternity institute, said falling levels of iodine-131 mean that milk should be safe to drink “in a few days.” But she said the government would proceed with its campaign to administer protective doses of iodine because “we are extremely sensitive to our children’s health.”

This iodine serves to block the intake of any radioactive iodine from water and food, chiefly milk.

In London, Prime Minister Thatcher faced a barrage of hostile questions from opposition members in Parliament about the future of the country’s nuclear program. She staunchly defended Britain’s own nuclear safety record and pledged that her government would press for tougher international standards.

“The accident in the Soviet Union has stressed that safety must be an international matter and we shall pursue this vigorously through the appropriate agencies,” she said.

She defended Britain’s own nuclear safety record as “superb”.

The Soviet accident comes at a critical time for Britain’s nuclear power industry, currently awaiting a go-ahead to begin construction on a new, $2-billion atomic power plant, the first in eight years.

A two-year public inquiry, completed in March, 1985, into the advisability of constructing the plant was the most extensive ever in Britain.

An official at the Central Electricity Generating Board, the organization responsible for power generation in England and Wales, said that it views the plant as the first of a group of four or five necessary to meet the country’s increasing power demands.

If approved, the 1,155-megawatt plant would be constructed at Sizewell, about 80 miles northeast of London. It would be the first American-designed pressurized water reactor ever built in Britain, which until now has used its own designs.

A rejection of the Sizewell plant would cast serious doubt about the feasibility of building any such facility in the country.

In Sweden, where scientists uncovered the evidence five days ago that forced the Soviets to disclose their nuclear accident, public concern fell short of panic--and anger produced no fury.

Stockholm seemed intent on enjoying the magnificence of a sunlit May Day.

Gunnar Bengtsson, the head of Sweden’s National Radiation Protection Institute, told a news conference that radiation, which had increased to five times ordinary levels on Monday, has dropped to near normal levels.

“Even pregnant women don’t have to worry now,” Bengtsson said.

The institute has recommended only one precaution: against drinking rain water because it might contain dangerous levels of radiation.

Prime Minister Ingvar Carlsson, at a May Day rally in the provinces, chided the Soviet Union for failing to notify Sweden of the accident when it occurred.

But his criticism was regarded as relatively restrained, certainly when compared with the words of Communist leader Lars Weiner, who told a May Day rally in Stockholm that “it’s unreasonable, unacceptable and, yes, even cynical for the Soviet Union to wait several days to give us information.”

This story was written by Richard E. Meyer in Los Angeles from reports by Robert Gillette in Warsaw, Tyler Marshall in London and Stanley Meisler in Stockholm.