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Wildfires in Russia have already caused major health concerns with the high levels of smoke in the air, but now the fires are sparking a new concern. According to Greenpeace, some wildfires are headed toward the radioactive wasteland of Chernobyl. The organization warns the fires could reawaken radioactive fallout in the area.

On Russia Today, a Moscow correspondent explains what exactly the fear is.



“So there’s a concern because the fires are heading south. And there is a region in the south called Bryansk, which was affected by the Chernobyl catastrophe and the soil there is contaminated and the worry is that the fires reach the forests there and burn up the contaminated soil, the winds could pick it up and put it in the air.”

A writer for The Christian Science Monitor reports, Russian officials are downplaying the incident.

“Russian officials have denied the existence of the fires, and Russia's chief medical officer Gennady Onishenko accused Greenpeace of ‘panic-mongering’."

But in The New York Times, the head of Greenpeace’s energy program says the threat is real, and that Russian officials underestimate the severity.



“Fires on these territories will without a doubt lead to an increase in radiation... The smoke will spread and the radioactive traces will spread. The amount depends upon the force of the wind.”

But finally on MSNBC, a Moscow-based correspondent says panic-mongering or not, Russians on the ground don’t seem too worrried about a radioactive threat.



“But I gotta tell you, today Moscovites, 11 million of them, are thinking more about being able to breathe freely for the first time in about a week. There were overnight showers that only lasted about a half an hour, thunder showers because the temperature dropped a little bit. And those thunder showers washed away the muck, that muck of smoke and smog.”

So what do you think? Should Russia be concerned about reigniting radioactive waste? Or are the fears overblown?