Nuclear plant worker dies of acute leukemia

[hang a left]

Source: Mainichi Daily News

TOKYO (Kyodo) -- A worker in his 40s who had been engaged in recovery work at the crisis-hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has died of acute leukemia, plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Tuesday.

Tokyo Electric said the worker's death is not linked with his work at the plant, citing results of medical examination by doctors.

The man had been exposed to 0.5 millisievert of radiation at the plant and showed no internal exposure to radiation, said the power company, known as TEPCO.

The dosage is much smaller than 5 millisieverts or higher per year -- the benchmark for recognizing a death as work-related -- TEPCO said, citing the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare's criteria on work-related deaths. The ministry's criteria also put the incubation period to develop symptoms of acute leukemia at one year.

Read more: http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20110830p2g00m0dm084000c.html

---

TEPCO denies that his death is related to his work at Fukishima.

[MineralMan]

1. There could be a link to his exposure or not.

Sadly, it won't be possible to tell. Leukemia occurs in people who have not been exposed as well. We simply will not have an answer to the question of whether the exposure caused this particular case of leukemia. We can't even compare a single case in any statistical way.

[TheMadMonk]

7. It could also be benzene from unleaded fuel.

Or radon coming out of the ground. His brand of shampoo.

Whatever the initial trigger, odds are it predates the incident by a considerable period of time.

[MineralMan]

9. Any of those things are a possibility.

It's impossible to attach a cause to a single case of leukemia, unfortunately. It could be the exposure to radioactivity. It could be due to a number of other causes. Personally, I think it's very important not to attribute things to causes unless that can actually be determined. Now, if a rash of leukemia cases appears among those who worked on the Fukushima disaster, then a statistical connection could be made. At this point, though, there's one guy with leukemia. In my lifetime, I've had three people I know contract leukemia and die. None of them ever had any exposure to radiation that they could remember. Sometimes, bad stuff happens to individuals and we never know why.

[Yo_Mama]

17. Yeah

I've had three people I know contract leukemia and die.

And it's always a shock. I haven't seen any occupational link either. A doctor - not involved in nuclear medicine, a woman who did administrative work most of her life and a young man.

There seems to be some randomness about leukemia.

My guess would be that his death would be highly unlikely to be related to the nuclear accident, just because of the timing. From a year to five years would be the first interval at which you could expect a jump in leukemia to show up.

[BeFree]

2. Nukushimas are not deadly

They are perfectly safe -- when compared to cars.

Of course the odds of a million car wreck one day is nothing compared to the one Chernobyl.
So.... there is reason for concern. Just don't eat too many bananas.

And write that check for your own Nukushima to be built near you soon.

[sce56]

3. I know the Nuke way of thought!

The head academic instructor for the school I was in when Chernobyl happened insisted that nuke power was safe since he was trained on SM1 just down the hill from us and he had done lots of work around them in the field. Of course he was not telling us about the Leukemia he had been diagnosed with and had lots of medical appointments for during my time in that phase of the course.

[Hubert Flottz]

4. "Don't worry be happy"

"Nothing in there to hurt anyone"

"Safe As Clown's Milk"

Edit...You might find out how safe some of this stuff the "EXPERTS" play with is, here.

http://www.project-112shad-fdn.com/

Weapons testing records over the years at Dugway

http://www.project-112shad-fdn.com/Background_Test%20list.htm

[trud]

5. don't let the facts interfere

with your 1950s grade B movie scenario.

[SoapBox]

6. "Tokyo Electric said the worker's death is not linked with his work at the plant"

..so...

The Tokyo Electric company, being the warm and friendly "person" that he/she or it, is...says not work related.

The hell you say!

Sheesh...Mr./Mrs./Ms. Tokyo Electric...we did NOT just fall off of a turnip truck yesterday and are not that stupid.

[TheMadMonk]

10. Not likely to make such a statement without lawerly approval.

I can pretty much guarantee you, that there is no way this can conceivably laid at their feet.

The possible triggers for leukemia are many. A relatively light dose of radiation is very low on the list.

[hang a left]

12. Oh and I am sure that the dose this man received, along with

many others was exactly what TEPCO said it was. Furthermore, there has been complete government control over media releases; meaning the media are given press releases to publish.

Japan's economy is so fragile right now, all it would take is a report of deaths from the prefecture or reports of malformed babies being born to put a wooden stake right in it's heart.

Don't be naive.

[TheMadMonk]

16. AAAAaannnnd: "The Iraqis took babies from humidicribs"

What will drive that stake home is folk determined to believe the worst without pausing to engage their common sense.

The workers are all given their own dosiometers, and they are not exactly had to read. So are you really making this a conspiracy that includes deliberately issuing artfully compromised monitoring equipment to "disposable" workers?

Whilst I certainly wouldn't be surprised to catch TEPCO and the govt. taking their numbers from the optomistic side of the error bars, I don't see their departure from reality being sufficiently large to cause full blown leukemia AND for it to run its course unto death in the less than five months since the disaster. THAT MUCH RADIATION exposure would show up all over the place.

The boundary of the contaminated zone is very porous. Independent (including amateur) testing is readily available. There are no huge populations of irradiated people being sequestered incommunicado as they wait to die.

Bad shit is happening. No doubt about it. But in realistic terms the shit coming down from this rare and extreme event is just a fraction of the buisiness as usual butcher's bill of fossil fuels.

[caseymoz]

8. You can't say it was or wasn't.

So far there's no way to diagnose radiation specific cancer. But as more cases accumulate, the cause will become clear.

[MineralMan]

11. It would be more correct to say, "But if more cases accumulate."

At this point, there is a single case. It's impossible to say whether it was or was not caused by this exposure.

[caseymoz]

15. Oh, with that amount of radiation, there will be others.

And, yes, that is only my opinion, but you can mark my words. Fukushima is a major disaster. You might not be able to tell the cause of a particular cancer, but we are certain to see a spike in cases.

[closeupready]

13. It probably was, though.

nt

[NickB79]

14. How rapidly does leukemia usually progress? Is 6 mo. enough time?

To go from cancer-free to dead, seeing as Fukushima occurred 6 months ago. I don't know much about leukemia, but that seems really fast, especially for someone in his mid-40's. I thought the faster variants usually hit children, and the adult forms of leukemia took more than a year to progress like this.

[Yo_Mama]

18. A month, not six months.

He was employed for a week in August. Death within a month of exposure to radiation is plain and simple radiation poisoning (if radiation was the cause of death), and if he HAD been exposed to high radiation, they could have detected it.