Perinatal mortality in contaminated regions of Ukraine after the Chernobyl accident

Perinatal mortality rates in the Ukrainian regions most affected by the Chernobyl fallout Zhitomir oblast, Kiev oblast and the city of Kiev (study region) show a rise and fall during the 1990’s relative to the rest of Ukraine (control region). A biological model, which was previously applied to perinatal mortality data from Belarus, 1985-1998, and to perinatal mortality in Germany following the atmospheric nuclear weapon tests, interprets the observed increase as a late effect from incorporated strontium-90. The observed effect translates to 1048 excess perinatal deaths in the study region until 2004.