Fear of nuclear led to panic and negative mental health consequences in the former Soviet Union and Japan. The notion that people exposed to radiation are contagious was first used to stigmatize people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.107 History repeated itself in Chernobyl. Women as far away from the accident as Western Europe were misled to believe that Chernobyl radiation had contaminated them, which led them to terminate 100,000 to 200,000 pregnancies in a panic.108
