Pregnancy outcome in Finland after the Chernobyl accident

The explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant caused radioactive fallout in Finland in April-May 1986. The fallout was unevenly distributed geographically, and, accordingly, the country was divided into 3 fallout zones. Whole-body radioactivity measurements of randomly chosen persons showed that the regional differences prevailed throughout the following 2 years. Data for legal abortions, registered congenital malformations as well as preterm births and stillbirths of malformed children were collected. The corresponding expected figures were obtained from statistics from 1984 and 1985. No differences in the expected/observed rates of the above parameters were detected.