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One mother had lived in Hiroshima since before the March 11 nuclear accident. The expert at Hiroshima University who measured the density of radioactive cesium suspect it is internal radiation from ingesting contaminated food.Hiroshima is over 840 kilometers from Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant.

A citizens' group called "Tsunagaro Hiroshima (Let's connect, Hiroshima" announced on October 11 that a minute amount of radioactive materials has been detected from the breast milk of two mothers who live in Hiroshima Prefecture. One of them escaped from Tokyo after the March 11 disaster; the other had lived in Hiroshima since before the disaster. The researcher at Hiroshima University who measured the breast milk says there is no problem feeding their babies with the breast milk.

The survey was done in early October on 4 people who evacuated to Hiroshima from the Kanto region after the March 11 disaster, and on 2 people who had lived in Hiroshima since before the disaster. 100 cc of the breast milk was taken from each mother, and tested by Professor Kiyoshi Shizuma of Hiroshima University Graduate School of Engineering.

Contamination Outside Fukushima, Asia Pacific Journal by Matthew Penney, September 4, 2011:

The Japanese government has taken the position that no one outside of the vicinity of the Fukushima Daiichi plant is likely to suffer health effects from the radiation that has been released since March. Many Japanese, especially parents of young children, are doubtful.

[The August 22 issue of AERA magazine, published by Asahi Shimbun, ran a feature on contamination in the Kanto region which] begins by reiterating a point that has been made frequently by critics of the Japanese government – that we simply do not know what effects low levels of radiation and the presence of isotopes in the human body will have on long-term health.

Japan's nuclear crisis has turned Mizuho Nakayama into one of a small but growing number of Internet-savvy activist moms.Worried about her 2-year-old son and distrustful of government and TV reports that seemed to play down radiation risks, she scoured the Web for information and started connecting with other mothers through Twitter and Facebook, many using social media for the first time.

The 41-year-old mother joined a parents group — one of dozens that have sprung up since the crisis — that petitioned local officials in June to test lunches at schools and day care centers for radiation and avoid using products from around the troubled nuclear plant.

It's the first time for anyone in our group to be involved in this type of activism," said Nakayama, who now carries a Geiger counter with her wherever she goes.Public dismay with the government's response to this year's triple disaster — earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown — is driving some Japanese to become more politically engaged, helped by social and alternative media. While still fledgling, it's the kind of grass-roots activism that some say Japan needs to shake up a political system that has allowed the country's problems to fester for years.

Professor Kodama is the head of the Radioisotope Center at the University of Tokyo.Professor Kodama's anger is now directed toward the government's non-action to protect people, especially children and young mothers, from internal radiation exposure. His specialty is internal medicine using radioisotope, so he says he has done the intense research on internal radiation:

I have been in charge of antibody drugs at the Cabinet Office since Mr. Obuchi was the prime minister [1998-]. We put radioisotopes to antibody drugs to treat cancer. In other words, my job is to inject radioisotopes into human bodies, so my utmost concern is the internal radiation exposure and that is what I have been studying intensely.

The biggest problem of internal radiation is cancer. How does cancer happen? Because radiation cuts DNA strands. As you know, DNA is in a double helix. When it is in a double helix it is extremely stable. However, when a cell divides, the double helix becomes single strands, doubles and becomes 4 strands. This stage is the most vulnerable.

Advocates for atomic workers sickened by on-the-job radiation exposure at places like the Miamisburg Mound Plant say they’re outraged by a training manual for a federal compensation program that refers to a hypothetical claimant as “Freddy Krueger,” the name of a horror movie character whose face was badly burned.The undated Labor Department manual, used in training people who screen applicants for possible compensation and medical benefits, also refers to the pathologist in a hypothetical dead worker’s case as the fictitious serial killer Dr. Hannibal Lecter.

The manual’s jocular attitude toward workers who have suffered from cancers and other serious illnesses is “indicative of the disrespect that’s shown to claimants” by Labor Department officials, said worker advocate Deb Jerison of Yellow Springs, who heads a nonprofit that helps sick atomic workers and their survivors obtain federal benefits. Some of the workers have died from their illnesses.Labor officials did not return repeated phone calls seeking comment.

The Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program, administered by the Labor Department, provides medical benefits and compensation for sick atomic workers, if it is shown their illnesses were caused by occupational exposures. Workers suffering from cancers and some other illnesses known to be caused by radiation exposures can receive lump-sum payments, as can certain survivors.For decades, the Energy Department claimed that none of its workers was sickened by radioactive exposures. Since the program was established in 2001, it has paid $7.4 billion in compensation and doctor bills for more than 86,000 claimants.Jerison obtained the manual in a Freedom of Information Act request to Labor and found it riddled with pop-culture references.

SOURCE: Radiation in Japan: Those Who Fled Fukushima in Panic Made a “Rational Decision”, Says Government, EX-SKF, October 4, 2011

From Mainichi Shinbun (10/4/2011):

[...] “So are you now telling us we should have evacuated as soon as possible?” “It is only recently that we knew how bad the contamination was.” [...] “I was worried right from the beginning. But the national government and TEPCO kept saying “It’s alright” and I believed them.” Chikage Sugano, 46-year-old housewife from Fukushima City regrets. [...] She measured the radiation level of her own home. The children’s room on the second floor measured 0.95 microsievert/hour. It was 20 times as high as the normal (before the accident) outdoor radiation level. She cleaned the house with moistened cloth but the radiation level didn’t go down. She made her daughters wear long-sleeved shirts and masks to go to school. They decided to evacuate before the 2nd semester at school.  [...] [The Ministry of Education's committee on nuclear accident damage arbitration said] “it was rational (or it made sense) to evacuate out of fear” [...]

Related Story Content Story Sharing Tools Share with Add This Print this story E-mail this story Related Related Links Japan PM feared nuclear disaster worse than Chornobyl Special Report: Disaster in Japan Japan ignored own radiation forecasts FAQ: Radiation's health effects Timeline of events at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex FAQ: Nuclear reactorsAccessibility Links Beginning of Story Content TOKYO –

 Related Story Content Story Sharing Tools Share with Add This Print this story E-mail this story Related Related Links Japan PM feared nuclear disaster worse than Chornobyl Special Report: Disaster in Japan Japan ignored own radiation forecasts FAQ: Radiation's health effects Timeline of events at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex FAQ: Nuclear reactors Accessibility Links Beginning of Story Content TOKYO –  The scars of Japan’s March 11 disaster are both glaringly evident and deceptively hidden. Six months after a tsunami turned Japan’s northeast into a tangled mess of metal, concrete, wood and dirt, legions of workers have made steady progress hauling away a good portion of the more than 20 million tonnes of debris covering ravaged coastal areas. The Environment Ministry says it expects to have it all removed by next March, and completely disposed of by 2014. 'I think Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), as well as the Japanese government, made many mistakes.' —Shoji Sawada, theoretical particle physicist But a weightless byproduct of this country’s March 11 disaster is expected to linger for much longer.  The Japanese learned a lot about the risks posed by radiation after the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Now, once again, they are facing this invisible killer. This time, the mistake is of their own making. "I’m afraid," says Shoji Sawada, a theoretical particle physicist who is opposed to the use of nuclear energy .  Sawada has been carefully monitoring the fallout from the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant. “I think many people were exposed to radiation. I am afraid [they] will experience delayed effects, such as cancer and leukemia.” Evacuation zone Japan's government maintains a 20-kilometre evacuation zone around the Fukushima Daiichi plant, with no unauthorized entry allowed. The government has urged people within a 30-km radius of the plant to leave, but it's not mandatory. Some people say the evacuation zone should include Fukushima City, which is 63 km away from the plant. At the moment, the roughly 100,000 local children are kept indoors, schools have banned soccer and outdoor sports, pools were closed this summer, and building windows are generally kept closed. A handful of people argue the government should evacuate all of Fukushima prefecture, which has a population of about 2 million.  Sawada dedicated his career to studying the impact radiation has on human health, particularly among the survivors of Japan’s atomic bombings. His interest is both professional and personal. When he was 13 years old, his mother urged him to flee their burning home in Hiroshima. She died, trapped beneath rubble . “I think Tokyo Electric Power Company [TEPCO], as well as the Japanese government, made many mistakes,” he says. Those mistakes have been clearly documented since the earthquake and tsunami triggered meltdowns and explosions at TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi, some 220 kilometres northeast of Tokyo. Warnings to build a higher tsunami wall were ignored; concerns about the safety of aging reactors covered up; and a toothless nuclear watchdog exposed as being more concerned with promoting atomic energy than protecting the public

The scars of Japan’s March 11 disaster are both glaringly evident and deceptively hidden. Six months after a tsunami turned Japan’s northeast into a tangled mess of metal, concrete, wood and dirt, legions of workers have made steady progress hauling away a good portion of the more than 20 million tonnes of debris covering ravaged coastal areas. The Environment Ministry says it expects to have it all removed by next March, and completely disposed of by 2014.

In Chernobyl, 0.09 uSv/h → Children started having symptoms. (near radiation level as westen Tokyo) 0.16 uSv/h → Adults got leukemia within 5 years. (near radiation level as Adachiku) 0.232 uSv/h → Mandatory evacuation area in Cheronobyl. (near radiation level as Asakusa or Tokyo Disneyland) I received a lot of queries. I would like to add some more explanation to this. This is a lecture of Ms. Noro Mika, who runs the NPO “Bridge to Chernobyl”

She has been visiting Chernobyl for 25 years and help children to accept in Hokkaido for one month etc.. Currently, the radiation levels in some parts of Kanto area are 3 mSv/year. Annotator’s comment: According to the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, the numerical values announced by the local government prove only the emission of gamma rays. The iodine and the cesium decay while emitting beta rays. If we have to deal strictly with gamma rays emissions, the degree of contamination can be understood, but we can’t measure the level of individual external exposure. Besides, the numerical values detected at the monitoring posts are measured at 10m above the ground level or even more.

In Chernobyl, an area 30 km from the nuclear plant, where the radiation level was 0.232 μSv/hour, was declared “no-entry zone”. In Chernobyl, in area where radiation levels were daily even 0.16 μSv/hour have been admitted as being dangerous, and in fact, adults got leukemia and died. Annotator: In case, in Kamakura, were I live, the level is 0.16 μSv/hour. Concerning the gamma dose rate in a certain spots one meter above the ground level, the radiation levels declared officially for Kamakura city are generally between 0.11〜0.14 μSv/hour. Radioactivity, in case of of iron, concrete, etc causes the oxidation and corrosion, but in humans accelerates the aging process and cause them sickness.

May 2012 newspaper published by a Soma City citizens group and translated by EXSKF

Please be careful! On the roads and near the side drains by the side walks in Minami Soma City and Soma City, we’ve started to see the black substance that looks like dirt. [...] It has been known to have very high radiation levels [...] Please do not go near it. [...] The survey meter shows 56.3 microsieverts/hour. Young children in particular should pay attention.

It’s noted that the in the same newspaper, they are urging the city’s former residents — particularly mothers with children — to return to the city.

Testimony by Professor Tatsuhiko Kodama of Tokyo University continues. He goes back to Minami Soma City where his Radioisotope Center has been helping to decontaminate.We at the Radioisotope Center of Tokyo University have been helping to decontaminate Minami-Soma City, sending about 4 people at a time and doing decontamination work for the length of 700km per week.Again, what's happening to Minami-Soma clearly shows that 20 or 30 kilometer radius [from the nuke plant] doesn't make any sense at all. You have to measure in more detail like measuring each nursery school.

Right now, from the 20 to 30 kilometer radius area, 1,700 school children are put on the buses to go to school. Actually in Minami-Soma, the center of the city is located near the ocean, and 70% of the schools have relatively low level of radiation. Yet, children are forced to get on the school buses to go all the way to schools near Iitate-mura [where radiation is higher], spending 1 million yen everyday for the busing.

I strongly demand that this situation be terminated as soon as possible.What's most problematic is the government's policy that they will compensate the residents for the moving cost only if their areas are designated as official evacuation zones. In a recent committee held at the House of Councilors [Upper House], President Shimizu of TEPCO and Mr. Kaieda, Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry answered that way. I ask you to separate the two immediately - compensation criteria issue and children's safety issue.

Of 10 nuclear power plant workers who have developed cancer and received workers' compensation in the past, nine had been exposed to less than 100 millisieverts of radiation, it has been learned.

The revelation comes amid reports that a number of workers battling the crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant were found to have been exposed to more than the emergency limit of 250 millisieverts, which was raised from the previous limit of 100 millisieverts in March.

According to Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry statistics, of the 10 nuclear power plant workers, six had leukemia, two multiple myeloma and another two lymphatic malignancy. Only one had been exposed to 129.8 millisieverts but the remaining nine were less than 100 millisieverts, including one who had been exposed to about 5 millisieverts.

Why on earth would anyone choose to work at what’s left of the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power station? The job description probably goes something like this: - must spend day in full body suit, gloves, thick rubber boots and full-facial mask

- must endure extremely high temperatures in aforementioned suits - must work on badly damaged site containing the remains of 4 crippled nuclear reactors

Employees are under strict instructions not to speak to journalists – and supervisors from their various employers keep an active eye on them when they return to Iwaki in the evening. We were thrown out of one hotel when we had the audacity to approach a group of men employed to clear rubble from the site. Yet there were others who wanted to talk – albeit anonymously. Their working conditions I asked? Terrible, they said: “a burning-hell”, “terrifying” and “very troubling” – phrases I recorded in my notebook. But I wasn’t getting any closer to answering my question – why work there?

Explosions and fires caused additional damage to other reactors and released vast quantities of poisonous radioactive materials into the environment. Livestock, crops and drinking water within a 75-mile radius of the accident were immediately contaminated. Now, reports of lethal doses of radiation as far as 200 miles away are starting to become more commonplace

In the United States, a recent report by Janette Sherman, M.D. and epidemiologist Joseph Mangano indicate a 35-percent spike in infant mortality throughout the Pacific Northwest. Meanwhile, the true extent of the damage and radioactive contamination caused by the Fukushima disaster continues to be downplayed or ignored entirely by the mainstream media. Getting to the truth has been difficult.

In an exclusive interview with AFP, Gunderson gives a timely assessment of the ongoing crisis in Japan and aprises us of what he expects to unfold in the future. “On the bright side, the reactors are in better condition than they’ve been in the last three months,” sayd Gunderson. “Right now, TEPCO has managed to avoid creating new pools of contaminated water by treating existing water through the Areva system.”

Resignation to and responsibility for Fukushima disaster

It hasn’t been long since I read a science fiction piece in which humankind decides to bury massive amounts of radioactive waste deep underground. They are stumped by how they should warn the people of the future who will be left to deal with the waste, and by who should sign the warning. Unfortunately, the situation is no longer a matter of fiction. We are one-sidedly unloading our burdens onto future generations. When did humankind abandon the morals that would stop us from doing such a thing? Have we passed a fundamental turning point in history?

After March 11, I stayed up until late every night watching television (a newly formed habit following the disaster). There was a television reporter who went to check in on a house with the lights on in an area that was otherwise dark due to evacuation orders. As it turned out, a horse was in labor and the owner was unable to leave its side. Several days later, the reporter visited the farm once again, and saw the mare and its foal indoors in the dark. Their owner’s expression was gloomy. The foal had not been allowed outside to run around freely because radioactive material-contaminated rain had fallen on the grass. The crisis has taken away lives that many people are still trying to get back. What messages can we deliver to those people and how? I need to hear those words, too, and the person I have turned to for guidance is the physician Shuntaro Hida, who has been speaking about the dangers of internal exposure to radiation since the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

SciDev.Net reporters from around the world tell us which countries are set on developing nuclear energy despite the Fukushima accident. The quest for energy independence, rising power needs and a desire for political weight all mean that few developing countries with nuclear ambitions have abandoned them in the light of the Fukushima accident. Jordan's planned nuclear plant is part of a strategy to deal with acute water and energy shortages.

The Jordan Atomic Energy Commission (JAEC) wants Jordan to get 60 per cent of its energy from nuclear by 2035. Currently, obtaining energy from neighbouring Arab countries costs Jordan about a fifth of its gross domestic product. The country is also one of the world's most water-poor nations. Jordan plans to desalinate sea water from the Gulf of Aqaba to the south, then pump it to population centres in Amman, Irbid, and Zarqa, using its nuclear-derived energy. After the Fukushima disaster, Jordan started re-evaluating safety procedures for its nuclear reactor, scheduled to begin construction in 2013. The country also considered more safety procedures for construction and in ongoing geological and environmental investigations.

The government would not reverse its decision to build nuclear reactors in Jordan because of the Fukushima disaster," says Abdel-Halim Wreikat, vice Chairman of the JAEC. "Our plant type is a third-generation pressurised water reactor, and it is safer than the Fukushima boiling water reactor." Wreikat argues that "the nuclear option for Jordan at the moment is better than renewable energy options such as solar and wind, as they are still of high cost." But some Jordanian researchers disagree. "The cost of electricity generated from solar plants comes down each year by about five per cent, while the cost of producing electricity from nuclear power is rising year after year," says Ahmed Al-Salaymeh, director of the Energy Centre at the University of Jordan. He called for more economic feasibility studies of the nuclear option.

Extract Salmon is no longer cherished as a local specialty in northeast China, where people fear the fish have been contaminated by the radiation from the meltdown at the Fukshima nuclear plant in Japan following the devastating earthquake in March this year. “It has been a long-time privilege for me to preserve salmon at the request of relatives and friends but lately they have refused it, even when I called to offer them some,” said Xing Guo, a fishery worker in Fuyuan county on the border with Russia in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang. Guo’s mother told him not to eat salmon after she heard rumors that the fish had been contaminated in the Sea of Japan before making their migration to local fresh water. “I have seen some fish thrown in the rubbish bin outside. Not daring to eat it, those who received salmon as a present threw it away,” he said. End Extract http://www.wantchinatimes.com/news-subclass-cnt.aspx?cid=1103&MainCatID=11&id=20110930000055

The threat of radioactive contamination faced particularly by children after the Mar. 11 nuclear disaster in Japan has touched the heart of the Japanese public, and become a major political and social issue. Mothers are inevitably in the forefront of citizen groups working to protect children. At a meeting this week at the Ministry of Welfare, they presented an appeal that included a demand for the world’s first radiation safety standards for minors.

During a meeting with Vice-Minister for Health and Welfare Yoko Komiyama, Emiko Ito from the Fukshima- based Kodomo Zenkoku (Children Across Japan) Net called on the government to do more to protect children. “Safety standards established in nuclear power countries are currently set for adults,” she said. “It is a given fact that children are far more vulnerable to exposure.”

Paediatrician Dr Makoto Yamada from the Network to Protect Children from Radiation told IPS: “The hard truth is that radiation levels set in countries today are continuously challenged. Against such a backdrop, it is almost impossible to set a medically accepted rate for children.” Yamada says he believes children should be protected from all levels of radiation, which is the reason he started his network. The network is comprised of doctors from across Japan who visit Fukushima voluntarily to counsel anxious parents and provide independent radiation testing.