nuclear-news

US doctors say that Japan’s revised radiation rules endanger children

the exposure limit set for school grounds in the area affected by radiation from the crippled nuclear power plant  – 20 millisieverts per year – puts children and pregnant women at an unacceptable risk for cancer.

Japan: Are Kids Being Exposed to Too Much Radiation?, TIME  by KRISTA MAHR , May 3, 2011 , A U.S. medical group has slammed the Japanese government and senior nuclear adviser Toshiso Kosako has tearfully resigned over the levels of radiation exposure Tokyo says are safe for students at elementary and junior high schools in Fukushima prefecture.

In a statement quoted by Kyodo news agency, Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) says the exposure limit set for school grounds in the area affected by radiation from the crippled nuclear power plant  – 20 millisieverts per year – puts children and pregnant women at an unacceptable risk for cancer.

The statement reads:

[Twenty millisieverts] for children exposes them to a 1 in 200 risk of getting cancer. And if they are exposed to this dose for two years, the risk is 1 in 100. There is no way that this level of exposure can be considered ‘safe’ for children.

The 20 millisieverts per year benchmark is on the outside of what the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) recommends in its guidelines for governments dealing with radiation leakages:…………. It’s a dark bet to be making on children’s health, and one  — to take the extremely cynical view — that the deciding officials will never have to see through. Decades later, the health  impact of Chernobyl is still not clear; the  kind of cancers that can develop from radiation exposure can take up to 60 years to manifest…….
http://ecocentric.blogs.time.com/2011/05/03/japan-are-kids-being-exposed-to-too-much-radiation/#ixzz1LRwKtq9m

May 4, 2011 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | health, Japan