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Fracking a ‘Dirty Bomb’

TMI also can’t explain why the thyroid cancer rate for the four counties flanking Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant in New York was 66% above the national rate in 2001-2005. Other, more subtle sources may also be contributing to hiked thyroid cancer rates, like leaking nuclear power plants and hydraulic fracturing, both of which contaminate air, soil and groundwater with radiation and other nasty chemicals. Indeed, remarking on this, Mangano (who recently co-authored a controversial study with toxicologist Janette Sherman suggesting a link between Fukushima fallout and US cancer deaths numbering from 14,000 to 20,000) said:

From 1970-1993, Indian Point released 17.50 curies of airborne I-131 and particulates…. [That] amount exceeded the official total of 14.20 curies released from the 1979 Three Mile Island accident. In 2007, officials that operate the Indian Point plant reported levels of I-131 in the local air, water, and milk, each of which is a potential vector for ingestion. Iodine-131, or I-131, is a radioactive isotope produced by nuclear fission

Radiation isn’t released into the environment only via nuclear plants and bombs. Geologist Tracy Bank found that fracking mobilizes rock-bound uranium, posing a further radiation risk to our groundwater. She presented her findings at the American Geological Society meeting in Denver last November.

Because of some 65 hazardous chemicals used in fracking operations, former industry insider, James Northrup, calls it a “dirty bomb.” With 30 years of experience as an independent oil and gas producer, he explains: The volume of fluid in a hydrofrack can exceed three million gallons, or almost 24 million pounds of fluid, about the same weight as 7,500 automobiles. The fracking fluid contains chemicals that would be illegal to use in warfare under the rules of the Geneva Convention. This all adds up to a massive explosion of a ‘dirty bomb’ underground.

The survey was conducted by the national government and the Fukushima prefectural government from March 26 to 30 in Iwaki City, Kawamata-machi, and Iitate-mura, where the authorities expected the high probability of internal radiation exposure at the thyroid gland. 1,080 children aged zero to 15 were tested, and 45% had the internal radiation exposure.

According to the NSC, the highest dose was 0.1 microsievert/hour (body dose equivalent of 50 millisieverts per year at thyroid gland for 1 year old). For 99% of the children tested, the dose was 0.04 microsievert/hour or less, which is the dose equivalent of 20 millisieverts per year at thyroid gland for 1 year old. However, Commissioner Kato said in the press conference on July 4, "To consider body dose equivalent, the survey was too coarse. There was no child who need further detailed examination."

According to the ICRP recommendation, 100 millisieverts per year will increase the risk of cancer by 0.5%, and that amount is set as the maximum annual exposure limit in a nuclear emergency. In the survey this time, the standard was set at 100 millisieverts, and the detailed examination was to be done if 0.2 microsievert/hour dose was found, which would be the dose equivalent of 100 millisieverts per year at thyroid gland for 1 year old.

The Japanese government submitted the report to the IAEA which mentioned the survey done on 1,080 children for radiation at the thyroid gland, but the government did not disclose what percentage of the children were actually affected.

So the Japanese government was secretly testing the children in Iitate-mura, as it scoffed at the suggestion by IAEA that the radiation level in the village was very high and evacuation should be considered. All back in late March when it could have made a difference. According to Tokyo Brown Tabby who read the Japanese post and called up the NSC, the NSC says the data was uploaded in May to the NSC website. So far I haven't managed to locate it. The NSC also says they informed the parents. I hope so.

From Tokyo Shinbun (7/5/2011

From Tokyo Shinbun (7/5/2011

From Tokyo Shinbun

Therefore, the fetuses and small children, with cells that rapidly divide, are most susceptible to radiation danger. Even for adults, there are cells that rapidly divide such as hair, blood cells and intestinal epitheria, and they can be damaged by radiation.Let me give you an example of what we know about internal radiation.

One genetic mutation does not cause cancer. After the initial hit by radiation, it needs a different trigger for a cell to mutate into a cancer cell, which is called "driver mutation" or "passenger mutation". (For details please refer to the attached document about the cases in Chernobyl and cesium.)Alpha radiation is most famous. I was startled when I learned of a professor at Tokyo University who said it was safe to drink plutonium.

Alpha radiation is the most dangerous radiation. It causes thorotrast liver damage, as we, liver specialists, know very well.Internal radiation is referred to as such-and-such millisieverts, but it is utterly meaningless. Iodine-131 goes to thyroid gland, and thorotrast goes to liver, and cesium goes to urothelium and urinary bladder. Whole body scan is utterly meaningless unless you look at these parts in the body where radiation accumulates.

Thorotrast was a contrast medium used in Germany since 1890. It was used in Japan since 1930, but it was found that 25 to 30% of people developed liver cancer 20 to 30 years later.Why does it take so long before cancer develops? Thorotrast is an alpha-radiation nuclide. Alpha radiation injures nearby cells, and the DNA that is harmed most is P53. We now know, thanks to genome science, the entire sequence of human DNA. However, there are 3 million locations on the DNA that are different from person to person. So today, it doesn't make sense at all to proceed as if all humans are the same. The basic principle should be the "personal life medicine" when we look at internal radiation - which DNA is damaged, and what kind of change is taking place.

In case of thorotrast, it is proven that P53 is damaged in the first stage, and it takes 20 to 30 years for the 2nd, 3rd mutations to occur, causing liver cancer and leukemia.About iodine-131. As you know, iodine accumulates in thyroid gland, and that is most noticeable during the formative phase of thyroid gland, i.e. in small children.

However, when the first researcher in Ukraine was saying in 1991 "There are an increasing number of thyroid cancer", researchers in Japan and the US were publishing articles in Nature magazine saying "There is no causal relationship between the radiation and thyroid cancer." Why did they say that? Because there was no data prior to 1986, there was no statistical significance.

The statistical significance was finally noted 20 years later. Why? Because the peak that started in 1986 disappeared. So even without the data prior to 1986, the occurrence of thyroid cancer and radiation exposure from Chernobyl had the causal relationship. Epidemiological proof is very difficult. It is impossible to prove until all the cases are done.Therefore, from the viewpoint of "protecting our children" a completely different approach is required.

Dr. Shoji Fukushima from a national institution called Japan Bioassay Research Center, which researches health effects of chemical compounds, has been studying diseases involving urinary tract since the Chernobyl accident.

Dr. Fukushima and doctors in Ukraine studied parts of bladders removed during more than 500 cases of prostatic hypertrophy surgery. They found out that in the highly contaminated area where 6Bq/liter was detected in urine, there was a high frequency of mutation of p53 though 6Bq may sound minuscule.

They also noticed many cases of proliferative precancerous conditions, which we assume was due to the activation of p38 MAP kinase and the signal called "NF-kappa B," leading inevitably to proliferative cystitis, with carcinoma in situ occurring with considerable frequency.Knowing this, I was astounded to hear the report that 2 to 13Bq/liter [of radioactive cesium] was detected from the breast milk of seven mothers in Fukushima.(to be continued in Part 3.)

When radioactive materials were detected from the breast milk, what did the government and government researchers say? "No need to worry. No immediate effect on health of the babies."Professor Kodama is saying that by the time we have proof that there is a causal relationship between internal radiation exposure (however small) and cancer, it may be too late.Thorotrast is a suspension containing the radioactive particles of thorium dioxide.

But more insidious and objectionable is the creeping misinformation that the nuclear industry has fed into the public sphere over the years. There seems to be a never-ending cabal of paid industry scientific ''consultants'' who are more than willing to state the fringe view that low doses of ionising radiation do not cause cancer and, indeed, that low doses are actually good for you and lessen the incidence of cancer. Canadian Dr Doug Boreham has been on numerous sponsored tours of Australia by Toro Energy, a junior uranium explorer, expounding the view that "low-dose radiation is like getting a suntan". Toro must have liked what it heard because it made him a safety consultant for the company in 2009.

Ionising radiation is a known carcinogen. This is based on almost 100 years of cumulative research including 60 years of follow-up of the Japanese atom bomb survivors. The International Agency for Research in Cancer (IARC, linked to the World Health Organisation) classifies it as a Class 1 carcinogen, the highest classification indicative of certainty of its carcinogenic effects.

In 2006, the US National Academy of Sciences released its Biological Effects of Ionising Radiation (VII) report, which focused on the health effects of radiation doses at below 100 millisieverts. This was a consensus review that assessed the world's scientific literature on the subject at that time. It concluded: ". . . there is a linear dose-response relationship between exposure to ionising radiation and the development of solid cancers in humans. It is unlikely that there is a threshold below which cancers are not induced."

The most comprehensive study of nuclear workers by the IARC, involving 600,000 workers exposed to an average cumulative dose of 19mSv, showed a cancer risk consistent with that of the A-bomb survivors

April 26 marks the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster. The pro-nuclearists have gone into full-spin-ahead mode, misrepresenting the latest UNSCEAR (United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation) report on Chernobyl.

Two days ago on this page, George Monbiot (''How the anti-nuclear lobby misled us all with dodgy claims''), citing the report, wrongly plays down he death toll. He correctly states that the report found 6848 cases of thyroid cancer in children, although he fails to acknowledge it was due to the effects of radioactive iodine in the nuclear fallout. The number of cases will continue to increase, according to the US National Cancer Institute, for a further 10 to 20 years.

Thyroid cancer is easy to detect because it is normally a rare cancer. Most other cancers caused by radiation are not that easy to detect above the high background natural rates of cancer. It is the proverbial needle in a haystack scenario - but in this case the needles (radiation-induced cancer) look the same as the hay (other cancers). What the report therefore said was that statistical limitations and large uncertainties precluded being able to single out any radiation-induced cancers. It did not say there have been no cancers, as Monbiot and others claim, or that none will develop, only that it is not possible at this stage to detect them.

IARC states that ''by 2065, predictions based on these models indicate that about 16,000 cases of thyroid cancer and 25,000 cases of other cancers may be expected due to radiation from the accident and that about 16,000 deaths from these cancers may occur''. Whether we will be able to detect them when there will also be more than 1 million other cases of cancer over this period is debatable. But every one of these excess cancers is a tragedy for each victim and their family, and is no less so simply because cancer is a common disease. George Monbiot should read properly the BEIR VII report that Helen Caldicott gave him - all 423 pages

Eisuke Matsui, a lung cancer specialist who is a former associate professor at Gifu University's School of Medicine, argued in his papers submitted to the conference that the victims of Chernobyl in the neighboring present-day country of Belarus have suffered from a raft of other problems, including congenital malformations, type-1 diabetes and cataracts. Matsui cited a lengthy and detailed report of research by the Russian scientists Alexey V. Yablokov, Vassily B. Nesterenko and Alexey V. Nesterenko that was published in 2007, and republished in English in 2009 by the New York Academy of Sciences under the title "Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment." Matsui stressed that, based on such evidence, the Japanese government should approve group evacuations of children — at the expense of the plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co. — from certain parts of Fukushima Prefecture. He cited some areas of the city of Koriyama, 50 to 60 km from the stricken nuclear plant, where soil contamination by radioactive cesium-137 has reached 5.13 Curies per sq. km. That is the same as in areas of Ukraine where residents were given rights to evacuate, Matsui said. In fact in June, the parents of 14 schoolchildren in Koriyama filed a request for a temporary injunction with the Fukushima District Court, asking it to order the city to send their children to schools in safer areas.

In the ongoing civil suit, those parents claim that the children's external radiation exposure has already exceeded 1 millisievert according to official data — the upper yearly limit from all sources recommended by the ICRP for members of the public under normal conditions. Following a nuclear incident, however, the ICRP recommends local authorities to set the yearly radiation exposure limit for residents in contaminated areas at between 1 and 20 millisieverts, with the long-term goal of reducing the limit to 1 millisievert per year. Meanwhile, Hisako Sakiyama, former head researcher at the National Institute of Radiological Sciences, delved into the non-cancer risks of exposure to radiation. In her presentation, she referred to a report compiled in April by the German Affiliate of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW). Titled "Health Effects of Chernobyl: 25 years after the reactor catastrophe," this documents an alarmingly high incidence of genetic and teratogenic (fetal malformation) damage observed in many European countries since Chernobyl.

Sakiyama also pointed out that the German report showed that the incidence of thyroid cancer due to radiation exposure was not limited to children. For instance, she cited IPPNW survey findings from the Gomel district in Belarus, a highly-contaminated area, when researchers compared the incidence of thyroid cancer in the 13 years before the Chernobyl explosion and the 13 years after. These findings show that the figures for the latter period were 58 times higher for residents aged 0-18, 5.3 times higher for those aged 19-34, 6 times higher for those aged 35-49, and 5 times higher for those aged 50-64. "In Japan, the government has a policy of not giving out emergency iodine pills to those aged 45 and older (because it considers that the risk of them getting cancer is very low),"' Sakiyama said. "But the (IPPNW) data show that, while less sensitive compared to children, adults' risks go up in correspondence with their exposure to radioactivity."

Further post-Chernobyl data was presented to the conference by Sebastian Pflugbeil, a physicist who is president of the German Society for Radiation Protection. Reporting the results of his independent research into child cancers following the Chernobyl disaster, he said that "in West Germany ... with an exposure of 1 millisievert per year, hundreds of thousands of children were affected." He noted, though, that any official admissions regarding health damage caused by the 1986 disaster in the then Soviet Union came very slowly and insufficiently in Europe. Indeed, he said the authorities denied there were health risks for years afterward. In response, an audience member who said he was a science teacher at a junior high school in Kawaguchi, Saitama Prefecture, asked Pflugbeil to exactly identify the level of exposure beyond which residents should be evacuated. While acknowledging that was a very difficult question, the German specialist noted later, however, that he would think pregnant women should probably leave Fukushima — adding, "I have seen many cases over the years, but I come from Germany and it's not easy to judge (about the situation in Japan)."

At a round table discussion later in the day, as well as discussing specific issues many participants made the point that science belongs to the people, not just experts — the very point that underpinned the entire event. As Wataru Iwata, director of the Fukushima-based citizens' group CRMS, one of the forum's organizers (which also conducts independent testing of food from in and around Fukushima Prefecture) put it: "Science is a methodology and not an end itself." In the end, though the citizens' forum — which ran from 9:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. — arrived at no clear-cut conclusions, organizers said that that in itself was a good outcome. And another conference involving citizens and scientists is now being planned for March 2012.