Ellen Phiddian
Cosmos science journalist
Frogs are thriving in the area around the destroyed Chornobyl Nuclear Plant, with radiation levels causing negligible effects on their health.
More than 30 years after the disaster, researchers have found Eastern tree frogs (Hyla orientalis) collected in and around the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone show only minor differences in health markers.
The study is published in Biology Letters.
The 1986 explosion at the Chornobyl nuclear power plant caused the largest release of radioactive material into the environment in history.
“While the consequences of this accident were severe in the short term for both humans and wildlife, it remains elusive whether current radiation levels have the potential to shape the ecology and evolution of wild populations in the contaminated areas,” write the researchers in their paper.
The researchers collected male 256 frogs from ponds in and near the exclusion zone, from 2016-2018.
They studied frogs’ age, levels of a stress hormone called corticosterone, and the length of their telomeres – strings of DNA at the end of chromosomes, which help protect the DNA from degradation.
The team also tested to see how much radiation each frog had absorbed. They studied 197 of the frogs in detail, because their ages could be estimated most accurately.
There was no significant link between absorbed radiation and any of the health indicators.
The radiation did cause one indirect health effect, though: all 256 frogs were euthanised for the analysis.
“Our study suggests that current radiation levels experienced by tree frogs in Chornobyl are not enough to markedly shorten their lifespan and agree with a previous study conducted on a similar species in radiocontaminated areas around Fukushima,” write the researchers in their paper.
