The incidence of certain cancers has risen, and general poor health is common. Most concern has focused on the medical dangers presented to humans by the radionuclide deposition. Initial fears over iodine-131 led to the destruction of fruit and vegetables grown in the open air, and milk from cows grazing on contaminated grassland. But iodine-131 breaks down quickly. The time taken for its radioactivity to fall to half its original level, its 'half-life', is just eight days.
Caesium accumulates up the food chain from the soil through vegetation to contaminate meat.
Restrictrictions were placed on the movement and sale for consumption of livestock as far from the accident as Scandinavia and Britain. Restrictions on foodstuffs are still in place in some of the affected areas up to 3,000 km from Chernobyl, because radioactive caesium from the fallout of the 1986 accident is lingering in the environment much longer than scientists had previously anticipated. A report in the scientific journal Nature in May found unexpectedly high levels of radioactivity in western Europe which will last for 50 more years 100 times longer than expected. The high levels of radioactive caesium were found in fish in lakes in Cumbria in northern England and Norway. During the first five years after Chernobyl, the concentration of radioactive caesium measured in most foods and in water declined by a factor of ten, but in the last few years they have changed very little.