It doesn’t seem to line up very well with where the radioactive material from the disaster landed, save for in the most general sense of “more in the east”. Of the countries included in this dataset, if Chernobyl was the cause then you’d expect much higher rates in Finland, Sweden, and Austria and much lower rates in the Baltics
Finland: lowest death rate on the southern coast, which is almost the country’s highest Chernobyl exposure
Poland: almost an inverse correlation within the country, not to mention that it got one of the highest doses overall but isn’t particularly high on the death rates
Bulgaria and Hungary: low exposures, very high death rates
Turkiye and Georgia: high death rates, little to no exposure
Like, yes, there is a general correlation of more east = higher death rates and also higher doses, but there’s too much other stuff going on in the details for that to be the explanation by itself
It doesn’t seem to line up very well with where the radioactive material from the disaster landed, save for in the most general sense of “more in the east”. Of the countries included in this dataset, if Chernobyl was the cause then you’d expect much higher rates in Finland, Sweden, and Austria and much lower rates in the Baltics
I don’t know, lines up with the cancer maps of post-Chernobyl decently well. (Edited to fix typo)
It doesn’t look that close to me
Finland: lowest death rate on the southern coast, which is almost the country’s highest Chernobyl exposure
Poland: almost an inverse correlation within the country, not to mention that it got one of the highest doses overall but isn’t particularly high on the death rates
Bulgaria and Hungary: low exposures, very high death rates
Turkiye and Georgia: high death rates, little to no exposure
Like, yes, there is a general correlation of more east = higher death rates and also higher doses, but there’s too much other stuff going on in the details for that to be the explanation by itself
We’ll have to wait for other peer reviewed research for causation. Still wouldn’t shock me of there was some link.