AP Exclusive: Ukraine children eat food tainted by Chernobyl

[...] the cash-strapped Ukrainian government canceled the local school lunch program for 350,000 children last year — the only source of clean food in this village near Chernobyl.

[...] rural families are resorting to milk and produce from land still contaminated by fallout from the world's worst nuclear accident three decades ago.

[...] the village of Zalyshany, 53 kilometers (32 miles) southwest of the destroyed reactor, is in the fourth zone — not contaminated enough for resettlement but eligible for subsidies to help with health issues.

Ukraine's Institute of Agricultural Radiology says the most recent testing in the zone showed radiation levels in wild-grown food such as nuts, berries and mushrooms were two to five times higher than what is considered safe.

[...] Ukraine's economy has since been weakened by separatist war in its eastern industrial heartland, endemic corruption and the loss of Crimea, which was annexed by Russia.

Last year, the Ukrainian government, which is propped up by billions of dollars in loans from the United States, the European Union and the World Bank, cut off paying for school lunches in Zone 4.

In the view of Vitaly Petruk, head of the agency that administers the "exclusion zones" closest to the Chernobyl plant, the decision on the school lunches came down to how best to use limited funds.

An Italian group, Mondo in Cammino, took notice of the Zone 4 lunch cancellations and raised money to supply the 130 pupils in one village, Radynka, with a year's lunches at a cost of 15,000 euros ($17,000).

[...] a review compiled by the Greenpeace environmentalist group and published in March found scientific studies indicating children in areas contaminated like Zalyshany show much-reduced respiratory capacity.

Yuri Bandazhevsky, a pediatrician who has studied the effect of small doses of radiation on the human body, said there are "very serious pathological processes" which can lead