I understand the sentiment, but my personal opinion is that the human impact from Chernobyl specifically is vastly under counted. We're talking about a regime (the USSR) that didn't even admit there was an issue for a week while the plant was in an active meltdown. You really can't trust the official numbers related to the disaster.

I speak from personal experience. My partner is from Belarus. Their mother was nearby in Gomel at the time of the incident, and she was pregnant with my sister in law. Both my sister in law's kids have birth defects. The number of people my partner knows who have died of cancer is staggering.

And I'm not the only one to notice these impacts. Here is an article from the BBC that explores wool workers who treated radioactive wool [0]. A vast majority have either died or were forced to retire due to poor health. And these wool workers were just a microcosm of what went on in the country after the disaster.

Even today, some milk from Belarus has been found to be radioactive [1].

0: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190725-will-we-ever-kno...

1: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/08/world/europe/chernobyl-nu...