Japan earthquake - contamination & consequences outside Fukushima NPP

Borek

Must be some unit invented for Joe Public.

Gary7

Its in his latest video, which is full of odd trivia. He's purporting that everyone in Tokyo breathed in 10 "hot particles" every day during the month of April. Same for Seattle (although he's made two different claims for Seattle, one that said they breathed in 5 per day, and another that suggested they breathed in 10 per day). I don't know how he came up with any of these figures. Different posters are already regurgitating this story on this forum. Its basically going viral on any web site that has to do with Fukushima. Its the perfect meaningless sound bite for everyone who wishes to believe in Arnie's original story that "Fukushima is Chernobyl on Ssteroids (tm)". Arnie is saying his data comes from "scientists using air filters" (?!). He is full of circular logic, such as "we know the data is true because of the information coming from the air filters".

He's also talking about people in Tokyo experiencing a metallic taste, and he's tying this in with a similar phenomenon at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. However he ignores the facts that: Tokyo is much farther away from the source of the radiation than the populations of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl/Pripyat, and, more importantly (crucially, I would say) there never was any report of people tasting a metallic taste in Tokyo. And if the people in Fukushima were ingesting 30 times the "hot particles" that Tokyoites were, you would imagine that the tastebuds of those in Fukushima were feeling like they were gobbling handfulls of metal.

SteveElbows

Thanks very much, and sorry for not realising Bhopal had already come up here.

As for Arnies hot particles, I dont pay much attention to him or to attempts to quantify this stuff. I do think the issue of internal exposure is worthy of much more attention though.

I would imagine that this risk will vary considerably between people, depending on what you do on a particular day in a particular location. If you manage to disturb some contaminated material that has settled, you could get more than your fair share.

I would hope that more could be done with data from Tokyo and beyond to give us a better sense of the scale of the problem there.

As I am still studying the estimated releases of March 15th I hope to have more to add to this subject in future.

mikefj40

Woods Hole has a research ship (RV Ka`imikai-o-Kanaloa) off the coast of Fukushima surveying the marine environment for contamination. They are blogging about their mission here:

https://www.whoi.edu/page.do?pid=68736

They aren't publishing results yet, presumably additional analysis will happen on land when the ship returns to port. It's interesting for the tools and methods they are using.

jlduh

It seems you like pretty much this example as you mentioned it several times to counterfight the remarks about nuclear consequences, and I'm a little bit surprised by this argument. But finally i start to like it also because it pretty well demonstrates that if it's the only one you can give to balance the nuke accident and its consequences, well i would say it's a little bit weak: 1000 people left their homes in Centralia, we are talking right now (but who knows for the future) of between 80 000 and 150 000 people evacuated around Fukushima!

Quite a scale difference ...

QuantumPion

I've mentioned that example twice, both times in response to the same comment that only nuclear accidents create long term environmental damage. There are plenty more examples of other industrial accidents causing severe ecological consequences, I point to this one because its effects are particularly long lasting.

clancy688

A new post by EX-SKF. This time dealing with kids having nosebleed, diarrhea and lack of energy since the accident:

http://ex-skf.blogspot.com/2011/06/r...-diarrhea.html

Hm. I don't know. Maybe the radiation is at fault. Maybe not. But I think the most likely explanation for these conditions would be mental stress since the earthquake and tsunami.
Children are very susceptible for such things, I think it's probable that the adults are naturally concerned for months now, and the children are becoming aware of this. That leads to mental stress which could manifest in physical illness.

At least I don't see any implication why radiation should be at fault for nosebleed and diarrhea.
But anyway, those illnesses are most likely consequences of the accident, whether the radiation is responsible or not.

zapperzero

Aren't you getting tired of doing this? It's bad, it's still getting worse, it can't be fixed (the exclusion zone, I mean). Yes other industrial accidents killed more people, faster. Yes, other industrial accidents also create no-go zones. So what? If you get beat up, you say "it's OK because the other gang down the street just murdered someone"?

Get over it. I know you're personally invested in this but... really. The Nile ain't just a river in Egypt, you know?

Gary7

This was one of the most meaningless non-stories I have read. A kid's nose starts bleeding and the family takes her to the doctor who diagnosis her nose bleeds as hay fever. Somehow Tokyo Shinbun is allowed to report this as widespread radiation sickness, and of course the conspiracy bloggists lap it up, all the while complaining about spin from the mainstream media. The kid wasn't even in Fukushima after the earthquake until the end of March (when presumably the most radiation was getting spread around).

If a kid who wasn't in Fukushima started developing nosebleeds as a result of radiation, wouldn't every child in Fukushima now be bleeding profusely?

quasi44

I would say that without doubt, there are going to be many places where contamination will be much higher, being that the area is so low and that so much material and contaminated water were pushed inland. As to what they are telling their people is safe; I'd like to remind that many of those people moved to the region after the A-bombs. Many of those people are much more susceptible to cancers and other defects-mutations because of the markers they carry/pass on, and that makes this 'all-safe' BS something I wouldn't subject my kids to.

razzz

If you can't read anything else about this matter due to your bias, then at least read the Foreword in this book-report Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment

In part:
Many other links to more current reports are listed by the commenters under the ex-skf article.

Gary7

Kindly note that I do not believe the region is entirely safe. What I believe is that the physician on duty, who is, I trust, far better qualified than I, has found the girl to be suffering from seasonal allergies. SKF has chosen to claim that "many children...are suffering from inexplicable nosebleed" and has made this claim under the headline "Radiation in Japan".

Fair enough.

My contention is that
a) the article mentions two children with nosebleeds, one who was diagnosed with seasonal allergies.
b) the child in question was not in the area when the highest releases were recorded, thus the claim regarding Chernobyl, i.e. "Many knew in the first 10-day period after the meltdown that diseases of the nasopharynx were widespread" would seem to be irrelevant to this particular person, since she was not in the region in the 10 days after the accident. I would also challenge the thinking that says two children with nosebleeds constitute widespread diseases of the nasopharynx.

To repeat; I do not believe the region, particularly the corridor stretching from Fukushima Daichi to Fukushima City, is at all safe. I would not wish my kids to be there, and I sympathize with the families who are struggling to decide what to do. I note with interest that the doctor also ordered blood tests on the child, which I think was a prudent thing to do, and should hopefully give some peace of mind. If the blood tests come back and they show something related to radiation, I would be extremely surprised.

What I believe most explicitly is that two cases of nosebleeds (a girl and her brother, the girl who was found to be suffering allergies) mentioned in the article do not constitute evidence of a widespread health concern. I also think the nosebleeds could easily be related to the stress of moving to and from their home. I think this story is similar to the claim that many people in Tokyo were tasting a metallic taste after the accident, which was simply untrue. If there were radiation levels that would cause immediate widespread health issues, the evidence of this would be much more apparent than what is currently being reported.

Borek

Yablokov's book is being criticized as biased. You accuse others of being biased, but you offer biased opinions to show you are right - it never works.

Besides, Yablokov book is not considered a peer reviewed work, and as such doesn't meet PF criteria of a valid source.

jlduh

The problem with leopards spots illustrated by this recent TV video: contamination 1000 times higher than limit measured at 80kms distance fron the reactors, so way outside of the no entry zone:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z49_1YkPgPE

As i see things evolving around these reactors, the picture that is drawn day after day shows that the no stay zone will have, soon or late, be expanded to new areas in the future. The japanese government won't be able to resist long to the pressure of populations with increasing fears based on alarming data and measurements (dangerous strontium for example has been found more than 60 kms away from the nuke plant). The problem with well known leopards spots phenomenon is that it doesn't draw a nicely shaped go/no go frontier, it is far more complex than that, especially in a country densely populated with geographical elements (like mountains and valleys + typhoons spreading stuff) which concentrates contaminations in some areas.

Japan is not Ukraine. Land is scarce for all the people, so as long as further abnormal contamination shows up in areas further than the no go zone, government will have to expand the no entry procedure to new areas in the next months and maybe years, no doubt in my mind about this.

But evacuations decisions will have to be balanced with several other factors: how is the evacuation really possible for so many people on the long term (remember that increasing the diameter of the zone will imply more and more people to be evacuated, and this is not a linear relation!), how can all people accept this without many ones staying even if decisions say to leave?

One way or another, it means that a fair part of japanese population will have to live in an environment more or less radioactive for a good amount of time. Proponents of the hormesis theory can be very happy: they will have a full scale experiment there. I even advice them to move closer to their subject study by going to live in these areas for the next 30 years with their families...

It has been considered that Chernobyl played a significant role in the fall of USSR a few years later (even if there has been of course other reasons), considering the specificities of Japan geography and density of population, i have a hard time considering that Japan can keep its position in the world economy having to deal with such a mess in the long long run. Land is scarce and lost lands will exacerbate this, IMHO. This decline will be a long term process (also in the perception of the severity of consequences of this accident which will reveal weeks after weeks and months after months) but I don't see how this can be different than this scenario, based on what we already know and what we are going to learn in the the next months...

Azby

I'll tread gently.

--Yes, it's important to investigate whether or not there's anything unusual behind the symptoms being described in Koriyama. In fact everyone in the area, and everyone who has evacuated, should visit the doctor regularly and see mental health counselors as well. Their lives have been horribly disrupted, not to mention their diets, probably their sleeping habits, their exercise habits, and there is tons of anxiety in the air. Domestic disputes are on the rise. Everyone is affected both mentally and physically by all this. It would be amazing if we didn't see widespread symptoms like the ones reported. But whether or not radiation exposure has anything to do with it is another matter. But it's important to find out. I think there are serious issues to be investigated and articles like that one trivialize them.

--I believe that regions around Chernobyl have suffered a collapse in health terms as well as other social breakdowns, and that these effects are long-lasting. Some of it is due to radiation itself, but how much? I've been reading interesting research by Moller and Mousseau on birds after Chernobyl, and they turn up a lot of effects. Some species proliferate, some don't, some that eat insects that nest in the ground don't fare well if those insects are affected by ground radiation that doesn't affect the birds directly, etc.. The cascade of environmental effects is unpredictable in many respects, and so we need to be vigilant. We have a duty to continue to investigate possible health risks from low doses of radiation on humans, but so far the fact is that none have been found.

--As for Yablokov's book, I've read it and annotated it. My reaction may have been the opposite of yours. I thought,"How can anyone find this convincing?" I found chapters 1, 3 and 4, on the spread of contamination, environmental consequences, and radiation protection, respectively, to be the most objective and useful (though not unquestionably so). But chapter 2, on human health, is riddled with so many flawed arguments, faulty data, contradictions, and unsupported conclusions that I can't make much use of any of it.

He frequently says things like, "The appreciable increase in newborns with both major and minor developmental anomalies is one of the undeniable consequences of the Chernobyl catastrophe." (p133) But the data he presents doesn't demonstrate that. It often suggests associations, or correlations, but correlation is not causality. And unfortunately, he often fails to even demonstrate correlation convincingly.

Other criticisms:
--He states that he rejects the use of Western norms of scientific proof, especially the need to demonstrate statistical significance. That's like saying,"No, I can't promise that any of this data is valid." This is one reason the Union of Concerned Scientists, a watchdog group I consider fairly reliable, and whom many consider "too careful," concluded that the findings of the book should be discounted when evaluating radiation risk.

--Other reviewers have pointed out that the authors ascribe every post-Chernobyl increase in illness to radiation effects, and rarely discuss other possible causes.

--Still others, upon reviewing original papers cited in the book, have pointed out that the epidemiology is often fatally flawed. There are many cases where confounding factors have not been evaluated or otherwise taken fully into account. For instance, increases in cancer rates are shown, but no attempt is made to ascertain whether the subjects were smoking more or drinking more since the disaster.

--The New York Academy of Sciences distanced themselves from the book after it was published, stressing that it had not been peer-reviewed; in other words, they could make no assertions as to the truth of Yablokov's claims.

There are quite a few more criticisms to be leveled at this book. It's strident, accusatory, and alarming enough to influence a lot of peoples' opinions, but there's not enough solid scientific evidence in it to make it convincing to people who dig a little deeper, and who, like me, are looking for useful sources of information on radiation risk.

And don't get me started on Dr. Chris Busby. His work is frequently cited in Yablokov's book, and they co-edited the ECRR's 2006 study. Busby is all over the media, but he's one of the sloppiest, most intellectually dishonest scientists I've ever encountered. For example, in the late 1990's Busby self-published research claiming to find clusters of higher incidence of leukemia near the Sellafield plant in the UK; a media frenzy ensued. The CERRIE committee, of which he was a prominent member, was convened expressly to investigate that and the possibility of other previously under recognized risks from low-level radiation. Another committee member calmly pointed out that not only were there leukemia clusters near Sellafield and other power plants, but also in locations where plants were proposed but not built yet, and in many other locations as well. Busby ether did not look for such examples, or if he did, ignored them. It's unforgivably bad science, and his science is almost always like this. That Yablokov finds him to be acceptable scientific partner makes me question his standards.

My personal opinion is that Yablokov would have done the world a much greater service if he had found funding to translate the most relevant 1000 or so Russian and Eastern European papers in full into English, and just published those without hype and commentary so scientists all over the world could pick them over to find the useful data. Maybe there's still time to do that.

SteveElbows

Great stuff Azby, very thoughtful and helpful analysis of that document for someone like me who does not know much about it.

jlduh

5,77 microSv/h at ground level in Tokyo suburb (220 kms from Daichi)

http://enenews.com/5-77-microsievert...it-quiet-video