Chernobyl Disaster Sparked Private Relief Effort : U.S. Emergency Aid Arrives in Poland

A jumbo jet carrying 200,000 pounds of milk, vitamins and iodine from the United States arrived in Warsaw on Saturday, in the first airlift of emergency supplies to Poles affected by the Soviet nuclear disaster at Chernobyl.

The chartered Boeing 747 landed at Warsaw’s Okecie Airport with supplies collected by the Americares Foundation, a private American relief agency, in response to a request for emergency aid from Poland’s Roman Catholic Church.

“We want the Polish people to know that somebody does care and has compassion for their problems,” said Edward Piszek, a Polish-American businessman from Philadelphia, who is chairman of the Polish section of Americares.

Message From Pope

Piszek told reporters at the airport that Polish-born Pope John Paul II had sent a message to the organization describing its airlift as a “magnificent humanitarian gesture on the part of the United States of America,” to his countrymen.

A nonprofit organization headquartered in New Canaan, Conn., Americares distributed more than $45 million worth of aid to needy countries last year, Piszek said. Officials of the group have said they would consider any aid requests from the Soviet Union, although none has been received.

The $1.5-million shipment to Poland includes 100,000 pounds of protein-enriched dried milk, 60,000 pounds of sterilized long-life liquid milk, 1.3 million vitamin tablets and 600,000 doses of potassium iodide, to prevent the absorption of airborne radioactive iodine. The airlift also included several water purification systems, Jan Wydro, an Americares official said.

It was not immediately clear why the iodine was included. Since April 30, the Polish government has given a one-time dose of iodine to most of the country’s 10 million children under the age of 16 and has not indicated that it was running short.

The government spokesman, Jerzy Urban, said last week that the government was “grateful” for any such aid given to Poland, but he maintained that it would not be needed in this case, because Poland had already begun importing extra supplies of powdered milk.

Church officials, however, said little of this had arrived and that the donated milk supplies and vitamins were in fact needed, especially in northeast Poland, where contamination was heaviest and milk supplies have been the most severely restricted.

Father Zdzislaw Sawinski, of the Polish church’s charity commission, told reporters that the milk would be distributed through parish churches mainly in northeast Poland, to children under 3 years of age. “We have a lot of such children, but little milk is coming through,” he said.

The medicines and some of the milk will be turned over to the Ministry of Health for use in children’s hospitals and nurseries.

Because of its proximity to the Chernobyl reactor, only 280 miles from the nearest border, Poland appears to have received a heavier dusting of fallout than any other country outside the Soviet Union.

A special government commission set up to monitor the contamination has maintained from the beginning that levels of radioactivity recorded in Poland were not hazardous to health. But the commission nevertheless ordered a number of precautions to ensure that Poles--especially children--would not accumulate radioactive iodine in amounts that could cause cancer in later years.

Besides distributing millions of doses of iodine to block absorption of the radioactive form, the government has restricted the sale of fresh milk and warned pregnant women, nursing mothers and children to avoid eating leafy vegetables temporarily.

Housewives Remain Fearful

Stores quickly sold out of powdered milk as word of the accident spread two weeks ago, but supplies began returning to stores last week after the authorities rationed it to families with infant children. Rationing is now being expanded to children under the age of 3.

Despite the precautions, many housewives remain fearful that food in the stores, and tap water, are not as safe as the authorities insist.

One Warsaw mother of two small children said she had a week’s supply of cheese, some frozen meat and 17 eggs left in her refrigerator. “After that, I don’t know what I can buy next week,” she said.

Another mother said she had baked three cakes to celebrate her daughter’s first Communion, but that the 17 guests would have to make do with tap water to drink. Mineral water, soft drinks and fruit juices have disappeared from the stores.

“I’m not sure the tap water is safe,” she said. “But what else is there?”