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Yablokov: Nonmalignant Diseases after Chernobyl 125fully answered. It is clear that continued detailedobservations are needed to document thespread and virulence of infectious and parasiticdiseases among people in all of the contaminatedterritories.5.12. Congenital MalformationsThere are several thousand large and smallcongenital malformations or anomalies. Onetype has a strong genetic background (see Section5.3 above for details) and the secondtype includes developmental anomalies resultingfrom impacts during embryonal development.Among them are the so-called “large”congenital malformations (CMs), which areoften the only ones officially registered asanomalies. The other developmental anomaliesarise as a result of damage during prenataldevelopment and can be genetic, caused by mutations,or teratogenic, caused by toxic externalinfluences, usually occurring up to the first 16weeks of pregnancy.Wherever there was Chernobyl radioactivecontamination, there was an increase in thenumber of children with hereditary anomaliesand congenital malformations. These includedpreviously rare multiple structural impairmentsof the limbs, head, and body (Tsaregorodtsev,1996; Tsymlyakova and Lavrent’eva, 1996;Goncharova, 2000; Hoffmann, 2001;Ibragymova, 2003; and others).This section presents data concerningcongenital malformations and developmentalanomalies.5.12.1. Belarus1. The frequency of the occurrence of CMs,which was stable up to 1986, increased noticeablyafter the catastrophe. Although theincrease in CMs is marked mainly in theheavily contaminated territories, significant increasesin CM morbidity were registered forthe whole country, including the less contaminatedVitebsk Province (Nykolaev and Khmel’,1998).TABLE 5.67. Incidence (per 1,000 Births) of theOfficially Accounted for Congenital Malformationsin Belarussian Districts with Different Levels ofContamination, 1982–1992 (Lazjuk et al., 1996a;Goncharova, 1997)Level of contaminationYear 1–5 Ci/km 2 >15 Ci/km 2