Fukushima disaster: Radiation levels posing cancer risks on fourth anniversary of earthquake

[bananas]

Source: ABC Australia

Before the disaster, there was just one to two cases of thyroid cancers in a million Japanese children but now Fukushima has more than 100 confirmed or suspected cases, having tested about 300,000 children.

<snip>

Ms Muto said her daughter and son, like many other children, had not been the same since experiencing the Fukushima fallout.

"They had rashes on their bodies then nose bleeds. My son's white cells have decreased and they both have incredible fatigue," she said.

<snip>

Mr Konno said he would not be able to return to his home as the radiation levels were far too high.

<snip>

Read more: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-03-11/fukushima-radiation-levels-high-four-years-after-disaster/6297718

[heaven05]

1. as long as independent

focused scientists are not allowed into the site, we will never understand or know the truth about this ongoing catastrophe and what it represents to everyday people like Ms Muto and Mr Konno and us, the rest of the world. The media is playing such a complicit role in suppressing the truth here....but what else is new?

[chervilant]

2. True, that.

And, those of us who've expressed concern have been derogated and accused of foil hattery.

[heaven05]

3. true that and yep

in the early days of this disaster.....people pooh paahed the magnitude, the scope and the worry .....part of an ongoing and widely dispersed problem among liberals and progressives worried about our country and the world.: hi:

[chervilant]

10. There are a few

herewith who were routinely attacking the author of this OP, berating her/him for his/her ongoing concerns about this disaster. I no longer see these attacks, because I use the IL to insure I don't have to tolerate bigots, haters, misogynists, sexists, and racists.

I found an old copy of Omni magazine from 1980 that featured an article about early nuclear testing. People were encouraged to sit on the hoods of their cars and watch for the mushroom clouds--while they ate breakfast! We've been lied to about "nuclear energy" from the beginning, and I've been an anti-nuke activist since I was 17.

And, hi backatcha!

[davidpdx]

5. True and we may never know exactly how many died from the nuclear accident

[Overseas]

4. Sad K&R.

[FBaggins]

6. Not breaking news - Worse... it's incredibly deceptive.

Before the disaster, there was just one to two cases of thyroid cancers in a million Japanese children but now Fukushima has more than 100 confirmed or suspected cases


That's simply false. There hasn't been any identified increase in thyroid cancer rates. There has been an increase in thyroid cancer diagnoses, but that had been definitively associated with far better diagnostic procedures (high-resolution ultrasound vs. palpation). This is clear because:

* The age distribution of those with cancer doesn't match what would be expected if Fukushima were the cause. The youngest kids are the ones most at risk of thyroid cancer from radioiodine (since their dose rates are higher from the same exposure)... yet that isn't what has been observed

* None of the confirmed cancer cases would could be expected to be diagnosed by palpation. They're too small.

* Japan ran baseline tests on thousands of kids that were not exposed to Fukushima's release of radioiodine. Cancer diagnosis rates were as high or higher among that group when the better diagnostic procedure was used.

Note, this doesn't mean that there will be no cases. I've maintained from the beginning that there will likely eventually be a hundred to a few hundreds of additional cases of thyroid cancer caused by Fukushima. It's just that it takes at least five years to start seeing those in a way that can be associated with the radiation exposure... quite probably more than that. Right now it looks like there will be fewer than I predicted at the time, but we'll see.

They had rashes on their bodies then nose bleeds. My son's white cells have decreased and they both have incredible fatigue

She has obviously fallen prey to the lies of the snake oil salesmen. The casual reader could be mistaken for making the same mistake, since low white cell counts, fatigue, nose bleeds, and rashes are all symptoms of radiation poisoning (among other things).

The problem is that radiation from Fukushima is not plausibly related to their symptoms. Two simple reasons why that is the case:

* Dose rates from Fukushima are being measured in millisieverts per year, while radiation poisoning involves Sievert to multi-Sievert doses in a short period of time. The dose from Fukushima is thousands to hundreds of thousands of times too low.

* Even clearer - radiation poisoning has a short-term impact. Doses that high either kill you or those symptoms are gone in a number of days. There are no cases where someone gets exposed to radiation (let alone such low doses) and still has nausea or low white cell counts or nose bleeds four years later.

[Trillo]

7. Well played.

[RobertEarl]

8. Yes. Thank Gawd radiation is good for us

Because there is now so much more everywhere, that if man-made, un-natural, synthetic, radiation was bad for life as we know it, wildlife like birds and butterflies and sea life in the Pacific would be dieing off like never before.

But of course the only reason 160,000 people have been evacuated from Fukushima is just mean PR induced upon Japan by those crazy environmentalists.. Or is there a real medical reason?

[NuclearDem]

9. Wait just a minute, your TEPCO check cleared?

I've been waiting on mine for months.

[RobertEarl]

11. Well played

You nailed it and him and you.

Your two-penny check should be coming soon.

[bananas]

13. CDC: Minimum Latency & Types or Categories of Cancer

You incorrectly stated:

It's just that it takes at least five years to start seeing those in a way that can be associated with the radiation exposure

According to the CDC:

http://www.cdc.gov/wtc/pdfs/wtchpminlatcancer2013-05-01.pdf

Minimum Latency & Types or Categories of Cancer

<snip>

(2) All solid cancers (other than mesothelioma, lymphoproliferative, thyroid, and childhood
cancers)—4 years, based on low estimates used for lifetime risk modeling of low-level ionizing
radiation studies;

(3) Lymphoproliferative and hematopoietic cancers (including all types of leukemia and
lymphoma)—0.4 years (equivalent to 146 days), based on low estimates used for lifetime risk
modeling of low-level ionizing radiation studies, which represents a change for
lymphoproliferative cancers only from the October 17, 2012 version of the Administrator’s
White Paper on Minimum Latency & Types of Categories of Cancer;

(4) Thyroid cancer—2.5 years, based on low estimates used for lifetime risk modeling of low-
level ionizing radiation studies; and

(5) Childhood cancers (other than lymphoproliferative and hematopoietic cancers)—1 year,
based on the National Academy of Sciences findings.

<snip>

[bananas]

14. More here

https://nuclearhistory.wordpress.com/2014/03/27/the-minimum-latent-period-of-thyroid-cancer/

https://nuclearhistory.wordpress.com/2013/09/30/the-minimum-latent-period-for-thyroid-cancer-according-to-the-literature-pre-311/

[FBaggins]

15. Sorry... what I stated was accurate.

What you've cited is not the result of actual observed cancers from reliable sources... it's the low end of a wide range of estimates. They intentionally went low to be as inclusive as possible. It is in no sense the CDC's position on how long it takes thyroid cancer to develop after a radiation accident.

OTOH, we could look at actual thyroid cancers among the kids around Chernobyl (with much higher thyroid doses)... and it took 4-5+ years for the first cases to develop (in most cases, quite a bit longer - with the shorter periods often assumed to be related to iodine deficiency causing greater absorbtion). Based on the dose estimates at Fukushima, there's great doubt whether or not they'll be able to pick up the increase, which is why their baseline studies have been so thorough.

Can you deal with any of the bullet points? Or will you just pick at nits?

[olddots]

12. Nero is fiddling away

Humans exercise their most cherished right ,the right to be ignorant .

[NickB79]

16. This sounds like the USS Reagan scare again

Where sailors were claiming Fukushima radiation caused various cancers, known to take years to develop, to appear within months of exposure to Fukushima fallout

[RobertEarl]

17. Sailors got hit hard

The ship was in a cloud of radiation direct from the explosions.

Your discounting of a major radiation hit tells us that you have been deceived.