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The survey by the Ministry of Education and Science has revealed that 296 schools in 12 prefectures have used beef from cows suspected of radioactive cesium contamination. 2 schools used the beef whose cesium level exceeded the provisional safety limit. It is not considered the level of cesium in the meat will affect health, but the ministry is telling the schools to pay attention to information on shipping restriction on food items [due to radiation].

According to the ministry, as of August 9, the meat from the cows that may have eaten radioactive rice hay was used in school lunches in 278 elementary schools, junior high schools, high schools, and special education schools, and 18 kindergartens, in 20 cities and towns in Japan. 127 schools in Yokohama City used it, so did 53 schools and kindergartens in Gifu City [in Gifu Prefecture], and 30 schools and kindergartens in 4 cities in Miyagi Prefecture. The schools are mostly located in eastern Japan, but 40 schools in 4 cities in Mie, Shimane, Kagawa Prefectures also used the meat.

30 schools were able to test the remaining meat, and radioactive materials were detected at 8 schools. Of the 8 schools, two schools - a special education school for students with disabilities in Miyagi Prefecture and an elementary school in Chiba, had the meat that exceeded the provisional safety limit (500 becquerels/kg of radioactive cesium), testing 1,293 to 649 becquerels/kg. The municipalities say the amount of contaminated beef per person is small, and it won't affect the health.In the meantime, the Food Safety Commission under the Cabinet Office is soliciting public comments (in Japanese alone please, says the Commission) on their detailed justification for their decision to set 100 millisieverts for life-time allowable radiation exposure for the Japanese. If you read their conclusion, you would think there would be no problem with any of the nuclides that have been released from the broken nuclear power plant in Fukushima.

In another propaganda show meant to convince the public there is no threat from radiation in Japan, local schools forced children to clean radioactive dirt from the bottom of the schools swimming pools. One PTA member who didn’t trust the assertions from the school and the government kept a sample of the dirt collected from the pool and decided to have it tested for radiation

According to a the Mainichi Daily News (Japanese), that sample was found to contain 17,020 becquerels per kilogram of radioactive cesium. Here is an English translation of the Mainichi Shinbun article as posted on Yahoo News, 7/5/2011, provided, by EX-SKF

East earthquake: Community School of cesium from the mud pool Joso, Ibaraki / 2 times the allowable standard landfill It was disclosed that 17,020 becquerels per kilogram of radioactive cesium was detected from the dirt that were scooped out from the swimming pool when the teachers and pupils of one public elementary schools in Joso City did the cleaning of the pool in May. The amount is more than twice the safety limit set by the Ministry of the Environment for the radioactive debris that could be buried. The school moved the dirt in a separate area. Upon this news, the city’s Board of Education surveyed the situation of the pool dirt in city’s elementary schools and junior high schools on July 4, and found out there were 4 other elementary schools who had kept the dirt on the school premises.

[...] There is no such guarantee but anywhere. Out of the meals that may be beef suspected of August last year, has been contaminated with radioactive cesium from rice straw has been used as a food school lunch has become clear, radioactive cesium has entered in the current December 1 school was ¥ 26 433 municipal schools 46 18 prefectures. Number of children that may have to eat is up to 180,000 people to surprise. [...]

Read the report here

Fukushima Diary translates (a summary?):

The environmental group took samples at and near three schools in Fukushima city, well outside the 20 km exclusion zone from Tokyo Electric Power's stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex in Japan's northeast. "No parent should have to choose between radiation exposure and education for their child," said Kazue Suzuki, Greenpeace Japan's anti-nuclear project head.

The government had already taken steps to decontaminate schools in Fukushima prefecture, where the crippled plant has been leaking radiation since it was hit by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. Calling the measures "deplorably late and inadequate," Greenpeace said it had found average dose rates above the maximum allowed under international standards, of 1 millisievert per year, or 0.11 microsievert per hour.

Japan's education ministry on Friday set a looser standard, allowing up to 1 microsievert per hour of radiation in schools. Greenpeace said that inside a high school it tested, the reading was 0.5 microsievert per hour, breaching international standards even after the government's clean-up.

Shorts, short-sleeve T-shirts, no masks, sneakers, with small kids. (In other words, all the things you should never do.)As "decontamination" is set to become a new bubble for Fukushima Prefecture if not for entire Japan, the national government strongly encourage citizen volunteers to "decontaminate" their own neighborhood.So, one elementary school in Tsukuba City in Ibaraki Prefecture called on the parents to do the "decontamination" of the school yard on September 9, and Ibaraki City proudly posted the photographs of the occasion on its webpage.

Except... oops one of the photos showed the presence of small children. It was supposed to be done by adult volunteers only, for the safety for the kids. People started to question the wisdom of "decon" with children, so the city quietly substituted the photo with the one without any children in it.

Professor Hayakawa of Gunma Prefecture (of radiation contour map fame) is one of those people who happened to capture the photo before Tsukuba deleted from its site:

Despite the protest from the milk industry and the milk distributors, Chiyoda-ku, one of the 23 Special Wards in Tokyo, conducted the analysis of the food served in the school lunches at elementary schools, middle schools, kindergartens and nursery schools in the ward.At one private nursery school, 17.9 becquerels/kg of radioactive cesium was detected.Chiyoda-ku's result is here.

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.

Ever since the March 11 start of the Fukushima I Nuke Plant accident, unthinking, order-following school teachers and administrators throughout Japan from kindergarten/nursery school on (with a few exceptions) have made small children:

pick tea leaves which turned out to be highly radioactive (in one case in Ibaraki, they made them eat the tempura made out of the leaves);participate in outdoor PE classes with the threat that they wouldn't get good grades if they (or their parents) refuse;

clean the school yard, pulling weeds and sweeping;clean out the swimming pools with sludges which turned out to be highly radioactive;plant rice seedlings in rice paddies with bare feet (this was done throughout Japan, high radiation or not);

Hold the annual high school cultural festival, gathering high school students from all over Japan to Fukushima, in cities where high-radiation hot spots have been discovered throughout, or highly radioactive rice hay/meat cow has been found, or both. In one of the cities, Fukushima City, cobalt-60 has been detected in the soil in a park.Business as usual, extend and pretend that everything is back to normal. Radiation? What radiation?

The 35th All Japan High School Cultural Festival in Fukushima 2011 started, as scheduled, on August 3. A variety of events organized by the high school students (yes, students in Fukushima Prefecture had been so hard at work), with the help of teachers and administrators, will be held in cities like:Fukushima CityKoriyama CitySukagawa CityShirakawa CityAizu Wakamatsu CityKitakata CityMinami Soma CityIwaki City

The event is organized by the Agency for Cultural Affairs and the Boards of Education in each city in Fukushima, both under the Ministry of Education and Science.Asahi Shinbun, which is one of the special sponsors of the event, reports, with hardly a mention of the Fukushima I Nuke Plant accident or radiation contamination in Fukushima. All it says about radiation is that "some venues have been changed because of a concern for radiation level..." It's just a "concern", not the real thing:

SOURCE: Nurseries let Fukushima kids play at site with lower radiation level , Kyodo, October 5, 2011 Nursery schools in the city of Koriyama in Fukushima Prefecture, where outdoor activities are limited due to radiation spewed from the crisis-hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, took park in a project Wednesday to let kids play at remote sites with lower radiation levels. About 40 children commuting to two nurseries in central areas of Koriyama, where radiation of 0.9 microsievert per hour is recorded, and their teachers took a bus to an educational facility some 30 kilometers away where the radiation level is 0.1 microsievert per hour. [...] “We’d like to relieve the stress of parents by letting children play freely. Some families cannot take refuge” in areas with lower levels of radiation, [Ryuta Kamikokuryu, 40, operator of a nursery school] said. [...]

ABIKO, Chiba -- High levels of radiation have been detected on the premises of two elementary schools here, local education authorities have revealed. According to the Abiko Municipal Board of Education, 11.3 microsieverts of radiation per hour was detected just above the surface of the ground near a ditch in the compounds of the Abiko Municipal Daiichi Elementary School on Sept. 15. The amount was 1.7 microsieverts in the air 50 centimeters above the ground. Soil had piled up in the ditch, which had been damaged by growing tree roots, a situation similar to a residential area of the Chiba Prefecture city of Kashiwa where 57.5 microsieverts per hour was detected. Radioactive cesium amounting to 60,768 becquerels per 1 kilogram of soil was found in the ditch.

The amount of radiation 50 centimeters above the ground had declined to 0.6 microsieverts per hour by Oct. 7 after the soil was removed. The Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry pointed to the possibility that rain water contaminated with radioactive cesium overflowed from the ditch, soaked the nearby soil and accumulated in it. At the Abiko Municipal Namiki Elementary School, 10.1 microsieverts per hour of radiation was detected near the surface of the ground where sludge removed from its swimming pool had been buried. The school covered the area with a waterproof tarp and piled up dirt on the tarp to decrease the radiation emissions, after which 0.6 microsieverts per hour was detected 50 centimeters above the ground. The two schools have sealed off the areas where high levels of radiation were detected.

An assemblyman in Itabashi-ku, one of the 23 Special Wards in Tokyo, writes in his official blog that egoism fostered by the post-World War II education system is the root cause of this unscientific, rumor-based hysteria of the parents who want their children not to eat school lunch and instead want them to bring their own lunch boxes and water for fear of internal radiation exposure from contaminated food items used in school lunch.45-year-old Assemblyman Yoshiyuki Motoyama's main message: "Those of us, who have been spared of the damage from the disaster, must share the pain of Tohoku people."

Fukushima Teacher Muzzled on Radiation Risks for School Children, Bloomberg by Takahiko Hyuga, July 28, 2011:

[... O]n a recent July morning, school children in Fukushima prefecture were taking off their masks and running around playgrounds in T-shirts, exposing them to a similar amount of annual radiation as a worker in a nuclear power plant. Toshinori Shishido, a Japanese literature teacher of 25 years, had warned his students two months ago to wear surgical masks and keep their skin covered with long-sleeved shirts. His advice went unheeded, not because of the weather but because his school told him not to alarm students. Shishido quit this week. “I want to get away from this situation where I’m not even allowed to alert children about radiation exposure,” said Shishido, a 48-year-old teacher who taught at Fukushima Nishi High School. [...]

Kiyoharu Furukawa, 57, assistant principal at Fukushima Nishi High: “I don’t think the children are safe either, and I know the radiation level is still high… These days, they are wearing short sleeves and no masks.”

was played in the rain on July 28

in the annual high school baseball summer tournament. I saw the news when that happened, but was too appalled to post. I am still appalled, but here it is:

This is the measurement of radiation before the ballgame in Fukushima Prefecture on July 13.Batter box: 0.3 microsievert/hourCenter field: 2.2 microsieverts/hour3rd base dugout: 0.7 microsievert/hour3rd base stand: 0.8 microsievert/hourBack net stand: 0.2 microsievert/hour

TOKYO (Kyodo) — The education ministry on Friday unveiled supplementary school texts on radiation compiled in the wake of the nuclear crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, but critics blasted them for failing to adequately describe the disaster or associated health risks. The three texts are for elementary schools and junior and senior high schools respectively and describe the basic nature of radiation and day-to-day radiation exposure. But critics say they fail to refer closely to the disaster at the Fukushima complex and the health risks caused. End Extract

Did anyone say in the comment section that it was a duty of adults to protect children? I guess not in Koriyama City, which is located in high-radiation "Nakadori" (middle third) of Fukushima Prefecture and where 500,000 becquerels/kg of radioactive cesium was found in the rice hay.The city will start using this year's rice harvested in the city in the school lunches, starting next Tuesday. Since the new rice harvested in Fukushima is all cleared for shipping as the sampling test has proven it is "safe", it is just a matter of time till it's fed to the most vulnerable and without voice - children. Just as the Fukushima government, headed by THAT governor, has been pushing ever since declaring "safety" on October 12.Fukushima Chuo TV news (11/4/2011) via Nippon TV:

Koriyama City has decided to use the new rice harvested in the city for school lunches starting next week. Today, the city explained the radiation detection system to the parents.

Koriyama City will require JA Koriyama, who will ship the rice, to conduct voluntary testing of radioactive materials, and will start using the city's newly harvested rice in school lunches starting Tuesday November 8.

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.

The Japanese Science and Education Ministry (MEXT), is mandating a new curriculum which includes radiation education to be taught at schools across Japan. MEXT doesn't only mandate education standards, they define specific material and teaching techniques in many cases. This video analyzes the new radiation education curriculum. This is the same ministry that is responsible for setting some of the sky-high radiation "safety" standards with regards to the Fukushima disaster.This curriculum is aimed at junior high school and is thus compulsory education that all children in Japan will receive. Japanese junior high school is grades 8-10.

Links and references: Japanese Science and Education Ministry courses of study. (This is information on the curriculum that MEXT mandates for Japanese school children - Japanese language only.)http://www.mext.go.jp/a_menu/shotou/new-cs/youryou/chukaisetsu/index.htmRadiation Education Promotion Committee web site (Japanese)http://www.radi-edu.jp/My video on radioactive lantern mantels (which are used as part of the new radiation education material)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhE8-5g39SQ

Tokyo's Bunkyo Ward said Thursday that radioactive cesium exceeding the government limit has been detected in compost made at an elementary school.    The compost, made from fallen leaves at the school, had radioactive cesium of 1,488 becquerels per kilogram, higher than the 400 becquerels set by the government for agricultural fertilizers.   Although compost made of fallen leaves is not subject to government regulation, the ward decided to refrain from making more.   The contaminated compost will be covered up for safety.    Five kindergartens and 20 elementary and junior high schools in the ward have been making compost for use in flower gardens.