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科學家：核事故將引發“男嬰潮”
Nuclear age has led to millions of fewer baby girls being born

[ 2011-06-08 08:28]

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Baby boy boom? Nuclear radiation from power plant leaks like the recent Japan disaster results in millions fewer baby girls born worldwide, according to a study.

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Nuclear radiation from power plant leaks and bomb tests resulted in millions fewer baby girls born worldwide, according to a new study.

Scientists noted these types of atmospheric blasts rather than on-the-ground incidents like Chernobyl, effected birth gender across the globe.

Scientists at Helmholtz Zentrum München, Germany, analysed population data from 1975 to 2007 for the U.S. and 39 European countries.

There was an increase in the number of baby boys relative to girls in all of the countries from 1964 to 1975. This was the case in many eastern European countries for several years after 1986.

Scientists are putting the first spike down to the atomic bomb tests of the 1960s and 1970s where radioactive atoms were blasted into the atmosphere. Air currents caught these atoms and then distributed them around the world.

They think the second spike is due to the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in which the reactor exploded in the Ukraine.

The effects of Chernobyl were felt locally and no effect was seen in the U.S., probably because it was too far from the disaster to have an effect.

'The closer the country was to Chernobyl, the stronger the effect,' said study co-author Hagen Scherb, a biostatistician at the German Research Center for Environmental Health in Munich.

More males were born relative to females in Belarus - the Ukraine's neighbour - than in France.

The study is based largely on Cold War-era statistics, but the findings are highly relevant for how gender could be effected after future nuclear disasters.

And in the wake of Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident experts are predicting another baby boy boom could be imminent, especially on the U.S. West Coast.

Previous radiation experiments on animals may give a clue for the increase in male births. Tests showed that radiation caused damage to the X chromosome in sperm, Dr Scherb said.

A human sperm cell contains either an X or Y chromosome, while an egg only has a X chromosome. An XY combination will become a boy, while an XX combination will be a girl.

(Read by Renee Haines. Renee Haines is a journalist at the China Daily Website.)

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根據一項新研究，核電站核泄漏事故和炸彈試驗釋放的放射性物質導致全世界女嬰出生數量減少了數百萬名。

科學家指出，這種大氣中發生的核爆炸（而非切爾諾貝利這種地面發生的核事故）影響了全球范圍內出生的嬰兒的性別。

德國亥姆霍茲慕尼黑中心的科學家們分析了1975年到2007年間美國和39個歐洲國家的人口數據。

從1964年到1975年，在所有這些國家，男嬰的數量相對于女嬰數量都增加了。在1986年之后數年間，在許多東歐國家也發生了同樣的情況。

科學家認為首當其沖的原因是20世紀60年代和70年代的原子彈試驗，原子彈爆炸時放射性原子被釋放到大氣當中。氣流攜帶著這些放射性原子，將其散布到全世界。

他們認為第二大原因是1986年烏克蘭核反應堆發生爆炸的切爾諾貝利核災難。

切爾諾貝利事故在當地造成了影響，但并沒有波及美國，很可能是因為美國離災難發生地太遠了。

這一研究的作者之一哈根?舍布說：“離切爾諾貝利越近的國家，受到的影響越大?！鄙岵际俏挥谀侥岷诘牡聡h境與健康研究中心的一位生物統計學家。

在烏克蘭的鄰國白俄羅斯，男嬰相對于女嬰的人數比法國多。

該研究主要基于冷戰時期的數據，但是有關未來的核災難將對出生嬰兒性別產生影響的研究發現和現在卻有很大關聯。

專家預測，在日本福島第一核電站事故之后，將出現又一輪“男嬰潮”，尤其是在美國西海岸。

舍布博士稱，先前在動物身上做的核輻射實驗對于男嬰出生率的增高可能會提供一些線索。實驗表明核輻射會對精子的X染色體造成損害。

人體精子細胞包含X或Y染色體，而卵子只包含X染色體。XY染色體的結合會生出男孩，而XX染色體的結合會生出女孩。

相關閱讀

（中國日報網英語點津陳丹妮編輯：馮明惠）

Vocabulary:

imminent: (especially of something unpleasant) likely to happen very soon（尤指不愉快的事）即將發生的；臨近的

chromosome: one of the very small parts like threads in the nuclei(=central parts) of animal and plant cells, that carry the genes（染色體）

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