“CULTURE OF COVER-UP” AND INADEQUATE CLEANUP.
JAPANESE PEOPLE EXPOSED
TO “UNCONSCIONABLE” HEALTH RISKS
I find it interesting that the CMA writes on the neglect of action and
clarity upon the part of the Japanese government yet our own Canadian
government claimed no danger to those of us on the West Coast when we were
first in line for the fallout from Fukushima. Our own government ignored the
situation completely while alternative researchers found toxic levels to be
very high within a few days of the explosions in Japan.
By Canadian Medical Association Journal
December 30, 2011
A “culture of cover-up”
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.
This “arbitrary increase”
in the maximum permissible dose of radiation is an “unconscionable” failure of
government, contends Ruff. “Subject a class of 30 children to 20 millisieverts
of radiation for five years and you're talking an increased risk of cancer to
the order of about 1 in 30, which is completely unacceptable. I'm not aware of
any other government in recent decades that's been willing to accept such a
high level of radiation-related risk for its population.”
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.”
Were Japan to impose
similar strictures, officials would have to evacuate some 1800 square
kilometres and impose restrictions on food produced in another 11 100 square
kilometres, according to estimates of the contamination presented by Dr. Kozo
Tatara for the Japan Public Health Association at the American Public Health
Association's 139th annual meeting and exposition in November in Washington,
District of Columbia.
“It’s very difficult to
persuade people that the level [of exposure set by the government] is okay,”
Tatara told delegates to the meeting. He declined requests for an interview.
The Japanese government
is essentially contending that the higher dose is “not dangerous,” explains
Hefland.
“However, since the accident, it’s become clear the Japanese government was lying through its teeth, doing everything it possible could to minimize public concern, even when that meant denying the public information needed to make informed decisions, and probably still is.”
“It's now clear they knew
within a day or so there had been a meltdown at the plant, yet they didn't
disclose that for weeks, and only with great prodding from the outside,”
Hefland adds.
“And at the same moment he was assuring people there was no public health disaster, the Prime Minister now concedes that he thought Tokyo would have to be evacuated but was doing nothing to bring that about.”
Ruff similarly charges
that the government has mismanaged the file and provided the public with
misinformation. As an example, he cites early reports that stable iodine had
been distributed to children and had worked effectively, when, “in fact, iodine
wasn't given to anyone.”
ED: Before the clouds hit
the West Coast I found it almost impossible to find iodine, no one would sell
it or stocked it. Doctors, clinics, pharmacies, compounding agencies, all had
different stringent requirements to obtain it, or denied there was need for it.
Finally I found a compounding pharmacist who just sold it to me but not after
almost a week of searching.
Public distrust is at a
level that communities have taken cleanup and monitoring efforts into their own
hands as the government response to the crisis has been “woefully inadequate”
and officials have been slow to respond to public reports of radioactive
hotspots, Gould says. “That’s led to the cleanup of some affected areas, but
there are also reports of people scattering contaminated soil willy-nilly in
forests and areas surrounding those towns.”
“In some places, you can
see mounds of contaminated soil that have just been aggregated under blue
tarps,” he adds.
Even with government
assistance, there are limits to the decontamination that can be achieved,
explains Hefland. “What do you do with the stuff? Do you scrape entire topsoil?
How far down you have to go? And if you wash down the buildings, what do you do
with the waste water?”
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 long-term is much wider
evacuation.”
The Japanese government
did not respond to inquiries.
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