No big Fukushima health impact seen: U.N. body chairman [View all]

[TheWraith]

Per Reuters reporting on the investigation by UNSCEAR, the UN Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation:

The health impact of last year's Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan appears relatively small thanks partly to prompt evacuations, the chairman of a U.N. scientific body investigating the effects of radiation said on Tuesday.

...

Asked whether he was optimistic that the overall health effects would be quite small, Weiss said: "If we find out that what we know now is representing the situation, then the answer would be yes ... the health impact would be low."

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/31/us-japan-fukushima-health-idUSTRE80U1AS20120131

No real surprise here to those of us who knew the scientific facts about the situation. Fukushima was never one one-hundredth the danger it was made out to be, particularly by some panic-mongers on the internet spreading absurd claims as "news" about radiation killing babies in Idaho, and contaminated milk in Vermont, telling everyone that Japan was going to become uninhabitable or even that the entire northern hemisphere would be poisoned.

The real tragedy here is that in the cloud of scaremongering over Fukushima, which is going to end up being a non-event in terms of human mortality, the rest of the world seems to have forgotten about the 21,437 Japanese killed or missing in the quake and tsunami, and the estimated $130 billion dollars in damage to Japan. Actual deaths and actual destruction that people are going to be dealing with for decades to come.