What are the potential health effects from exposure to nuclear power plant leaks into the environment for humans, animals, plants.

Two of the most notorious nuclear power plant leaks are Chernobyl (Ukraine) and Fukishima (Japan).
Both of them having harm to every kind of life including humans, animals and plants alike. According to livescience.com radio active material decays and does harm to the human body in two ways by either directly killing the cells or causing mutations in the cells DNA. If those mutations are not repaired then they can turn cancerous. Radioactive iodine was found in the environment and it can be absorbed by the thyroid gland creating thyroid cancer. However this radioactive iodine does not stay in the environment very long because of its short half life. Iodine stays in the environment for about two months after the incident. Children can get sick from eating the Iodine radiated food because they have smaller thyroid glans so it would be a larger concentrate on them. Radiation sickness is how much radiation is absorbed in the body and the symptoms of it are the bleeding and shedding of the gastrointestinal tract. This is a picture of a two headed mutated turtle from Fukishima.

A different post from livescience.com tells us that almost 30 years after the chernobyl incident the animal population has an interesting change. Moose, roe deer, red deer and wild boar are still living the area and even more amazing is that the wolf population has increased seven times the population in the nearby reserves. This study did not look at the reproductive success of the animal species though. There have been animals that have been affected by the radiation like the local butterfly population by turning the grass blue butterflies pale in color. The plant life has been normal but the plants now have radiation in them from the soil being contaminated with radiation. There are also dogs who still live in the dead zone.