Blog 9- “The Politics of Invisibility”

This assignment on The Politics of Invisibility, written by Olga Kuchinskya, talked about Chernobyl fallout and the invisible health effects it had on people in the Northern Hemisphere of Europe, specifically, Belarus. Olga Kuchinskya is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communications at the University of Pittsburgh. Her main focus is dealing with every single possible way of discussing scientific information and data in ways to not make the topic at hand completely unknown to the public. Her primary research on the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986 analyzed the many health risks, specifically thyroid cancer in children in Belarus. Kuchinskya asses the lack of visibility of the effects that this nuclear fallout on the people of Belarus and how they were all perfectly fine, and thought nothing bad was happening to them, until it struck.  Kuchinskya had family that lived near Belarus and when she asked them they stated that they weren’t primarily affected, but there were “16,000, 30,000, or even 100,000 victims” (vi.) These people that were living their lives were completely blind to the fact that Chernobyl fallout could cause disease, other health issues, and even in extreme cases, death.  She stressed the importance of making these health issues more understandable and known to the public; however, she stated that it was, “not surprising that nuclear industry experts might be motivated to downplay the perceived consequences of a nuclear accident” (8). She tried to show readers that as much as we would like to know the effects of the things around us, it is very likely that there are things being kept from us in order to make a country stronger nuclear wise, even if it is at the cost of its own people. Kuchinskya struggled with the idea that there are just some situations that health effects can be known, and others just can’t. It’s important for scientists to help the general public gain access to these dangers so that they can take necessary action. Kuchinskya stated, “without the experts and their equipment, we are left with impressions and no direct experience of the reality to verify them,” (vii) however, when discussing the risks at hand “the same proposed thresholds, for example, might expand the visibility of one context but limit it in different circumstances” (8). Kuchinskya attempted to get readers to see that risk discussion is more complex than we may think, and discussing each hazard needs to be done in a way uniquely in order to reach the full extent to which people understand and comprehend that risk.