JAPAN'S FUKUSHIMA - RADIATION IN FOOD AND ENVIRONMENT BEHIND OFFICIAL REASSURANCES FOR VISITORS

If you are a visitor to Japan, here are some Facts You Should Know About Fukushima

 

By Takashi Hirose

Excerpts: 

 

-  In a residential area park in Tokyo, 230 km from Fukushima, the soil was found to have a radiation level of 92,335 Becquerels per square meter.

 

This is a dangerous level, comparable to what is found around Chernobyl ④ zone (the site of a nuclear catastrophe in 1986).

 

One reason this level of pollution is found in the capital is that between Tokyo and Fukushima there are no mountains high enough to block radioactive clouds.

 

In the capital people who understand the danger absolutely avoid eating food produced in eastern Japan.

 

 

-  If you go to the big central fish market near Tokyo and measure the radiation in the air, it registers at about 0.05 micro Sieverts – a little higher than normal level.

 

But if you measure the radiation near the place where the instrument that measures the radiation of the fish is located, the level is two or three times greater (2013 measurement).

 

-  Vegetables and fish from around the Tokyo area, even if they are irradiated, are not thrown away.

 

This is because the level established by the Japanese Government for permissible radiation in food – which if exceeded the food must not be sold – is the same as the permissible level of radiation in low-level radioactive wastes.

 

Which is to say, in Japan today, as the entire country has been contaminated, we have no choice but to put irradiated garbage on the dinner table.

 

-  The distribution of irradiated food is also a problem. Food from near Fukushima will be sent to another prefecture, and then sent on, relabeled as produced in the second prefecture.

 

In particular, food distributed by the major food companies, and food served in expensive restaurants, is almost never tested for radiation.

 

-  In Japan, the only radiation from Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Reactors that is being measured is the radioactive cesium.

 

However large amounts of strontium 90 and tritium are spreading all over Japan. Strontium and tritium’s radiation consists of beta rays, and are very difficult to measure.

 

However both are extremely dangerous: strontium can cause leukemia, and tritium can cause chromosome disorder.

Read more about Fukushima radiation  -  http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/09/26/a-letter-to-all-young-athletes-who-dream-of-coming-to-tokyo-in-2020/

Takashi Hirose is the author of Fukushima Meltdown: The World’s First Earthquake-Tsunami-Nuclear Disaster (2011)


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