Antinuclear

Culture of coverup – Japanese at health risk as govt changes the radiation rules

Public health fallout from Japanese quake, CMAJ,  Lauren Vogel, 22 Dec 11,  A “culture of coverup” and inadequate cleanup efforts have combined to leave Japanese people exposed to “unconscionable” health risks nine months after last year’s meltdown of nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant, health experts say.

Although the Japanese government has declared the plant virtually stable, some experts are calling for evacuation of people from a wider area, which they say is contaminated with radioactive fallout.

They’re also calling for the Japanese government to reinstate internationally-approved radiation exposure limits for members of the public and are slagging government officials for “extreme lack of transparent, timely and comprehensive communication.”

But temperatures inside the Fukushima power station’s three melted
cores have achieved a “cold shutdown condition,” while the release of
radioactive materials is “under control,” according to the
International Atomic Energy Agency
(www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/2011/coldshutdown.html). That means
government may soon allow some of the more than 100 000 evacuees from
the area around the plant to return to their homes. They were
evacuated from the region after it was struck with an 8.9 magnitude
earthquake and a tsunami last March 11.
Although the potential for further explosions with substantial
releases of radioactivity into the atmosphere is certainly reduced,
the plant is still badly damaged and leaking radiation, says Tilman
Ruff, chair of the Medical Association for Prevention of Nuclear War,
who visited the Fukushima prefecture in August. “There are major
issues of contamination on the site. Aftershocks have been continuing
and are expected to continue for many months, and some of those are
quite large, potentially causing further damage to structures that are
already unstable and weakened. And we know that there’s about 120 000
tons of highly contaminated water in the base of the plant, and
there’s been significant and ongoing leakage into the ocean.”

The full extent of contamination across the country is even less
clear, says Ira Hefland, a member of the board of directors for
Physicians for Social Responsibility. “We still don’t know exactly
what radiation doses people were exposed to [in the immediate
aftermath of the disaster] or what ongoing doses people are being
exposed to. Most of the information we’re getting at this point is a
series of contradictory statements where the government assures the
people that everything’s okay and private citizens doing their own
radiation monitoring come up with higher readings than the government
says they should be finding.”

Japanese officials in Tokyo have documented elevated levels of cesium
— a radioactive material with a half-life of 30 years that can cause
leukemia and other cancers — more than 200 kilometres away from the
plant, equal to the levels in the 20 kilometre exclusion zone, says
Robert Gould, another member of the board of directors for Physicians
for Social Responsibility.

International authorities have urged Japan to expand the exclusion
zone around the plant to 80 kilometres but the government has instead
opted to “define the problem out of existence” by raising the
permissible level of radiation exposure for members of the public to
20 millisieverts per year, considerably higher than the international
standard of one millisievert per year, Gould adds….
Following the 1986 nuclear disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power
plant in the Ukraine, “clear targets were set so that anybody
anticipated to receive more than five millisieverts in a year were
evacuated, no question,” Ruff explains. In areas with levels between
one and five millisieverts, measures were taken to mitigate the risk
of ingesting radioactive materials, including bans on local food
consumption, and residents were offered the option of relocating.
Exposures below one millisievert were still considered worth
monitoring.

In comparison, the Japanese government has implemented a campaign to
encourage the public to buy produce from the Fukushima area, Ruff
added. “That response [in Chernobyl] 25 years ago in that much less
technically sophisticated, much less open or democratic context, was,
from a public health point of view, much more responsible than what’s
being done in modern Japan this year.”….
As well, Ruff argues the government must examine the provision of
compensation for voluntary evacuation from areas outside of the
exclusion zone where there are high levels of radioactive
contamination. Without such compensation, many families have no option
but to stay, he says. “At this point, the single most important public
health measure to minimize the health harm over the longterm is much
wider evacuation.”

The Japanese government did not respond to inquiries… http://www.cmaj.ca/site/earlyreleases/21dec11_public-health-fallout-from-japanese-quake.xhtml

December 22, 2011 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized