When the biologist, Professor Tim Mousseau, concluded this talk by showing heartbreaking pictures of the birds of Chernobyl and their tumors and birth defects, the physician and anti nuclear campaigner Dr. Helen Caldicott stepped up to the podium to thank him.
She said: “I want to pay homage to Tim Mousseau, who with his colleagues is actually endangering his life by going into extremely high radioactive areas doing pioneering work, which is going to change the concept of radiation exposure to humans. What is happening to the animals, the insects and the plants is going to happen to us.”
Mousseau is a Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of South Carolina. For 13 years he and his scientific collaborator Anders Moller from the University of Paris, Sud, have done research in the most contaminated areas of Chernobyl. When Fukushima Daiichi exploded they began field work there as well. They study birds, insects, microbes, and plants at over 1,000 sites, creating the most diligent inventories of each study area and returning year after year. They found significantly increased rates of genetic damage in direct proportion to the level of exposure to radioactive contaminants.
Tim Mousseau spoke on March 11, 2013, on the second anniversary of the Fukushima Daiichi explosions at a Symposium at the New York Academy of Medicine. The two day meeting was organized by Dr. Helen Caldicott’s Foundation, at nuclear free planet dot org, and co-sponsored by Physicians for Social Responsibility.
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