Widespread radiation contamination being monitered by Japanese civilians

Shinzo Kimura, the radiation expert who quit the Health Ministry. Mr. Kimura has since done extensive testing to see if Mrs. Okoshi’s readings were right. He says they are — and that is bad news.

Doubting Assurances, Japanese Find Radioactivity on Their Own, NYTimes.com, 1 August 11, “……. starting in April, Mrs. Okoshi began using her dosimeter to check nearby forest roads and rice paddies. What she found was startling. Near one sewage ditch, the meter beeped wildly, and the screen read 67 microsieverts per hour, a potentially harmful level. Mrs. Okoshi and a cousin who lives nearby worked up the courage to confront elected officials, who did not respond, confirming their worry that the government was not doing its job.

With her simple yet bold act, Mrs. Okoshi joined the small but growing number of Japanese who have decided to step in as the government fumbles its reaction to the widespread contamination, which leaders acknowledge is much worse than originally announced. Some mothers as far away as Tokyo, 150 miles to the south of the plant, have begun testing for radioactive materials. And when radiation specialists recently offered a seminar in Tokyo on using dosimeters, more than 250 people showed up, forcing organizers to turn some people away.

Even some bureaucrats have taken the initiative: officials in several towns in Fukushima Prefecture are cleaning the soil in schoolyards without help from the central government, and a radiation expert with the Health Ministry who quit his job over his bosses’ slow response to the nuclear accident is helping city leaders in Fukushima do their own monitoring.

Such activism would barely merit comment in the United States, but it is exceptional in a country where people generally trust their leaders to watch out for them. That faith has been eroded by a sense that government officials have been, at best, overwhelmed by the enormousness of the disaster, and at worst, hiding how bad things are…….

lthough dosimeter measurements taken by amateurs are considered crude because they measure only one kind of radiation emission and do not account for how long a person may have been exposed to it, Mr. Sato suspected that Mrs. Okoshi’s fears were founded after he saw a map of airborne and soil readings made by the United States Department of Energy and the Japanese government. It, too, is relatively basic, but it showed a patch of bright yellow right over her village of Shidamyo, an indicator of high levels of the radioactive isotopes cesium 134 and cesium 137.

The councilman, in turn, recruited Shinzo Kimura, the radiation expert who quit the Health Ministry. Mr. Kimura has since done extensive testing to see if Mrs. Okoshi’s readings were right. He says they are — and that is bad news……

Doubting Assurances, Japanese Find Radioactivity on Their Own – NYTimes.com

August 1, 2011 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | environment, Japan

1 Comment »

There is a another very poorly represented group – the sailing fraternity on ships criss-crossing the Pacific Ocean through this entire period till date, ever since the commencement of this crisis – both, atmospheric dosage of radioactivity post Tsunami damage in March’2011 and then deliberate release of contaminants by the TEPCO’s Fukushima Plant a month later in April’2011 by way of a disposal of over 11000 Metric tons of highly contaminated radioactive water directly into the Pacific ocean. Very misleadingly reported as out of harms way of the Japanese inhabitants since the Pacific Ocean would contribute to dilute it (who cares for the sailors on ships, who earn their livelihood in these very oceans). Thousands of voyages have been forced onto the sailors by powerful and influential Corporations that structure their policies very similar to those of Governments, in terms of starving information, half-reporting, even diverting attention from accurate information on radiation, its exposure and actual threats involved in the Pacific. These ship’s produce drinking water using water drawn from the ocean. Furthermore, whilst better informed groups such as ‘GreenPeace’ undertook investigative voyages taking elaborate precautions on their ship, such as special air intake filters, construction of decontamination chambers on board their ships, protective gear to reduce the effect of radiation and instruments to detect the levels of exposure, on the other hand, the hapless sailors of the thousands of shipping companies who have cumulatively recorded an unaccounted thousands of voyages and countless hours of exposure to date in the contaminated waters of the Pacific Ocean, have been bullied into silent obedience by shipping companies without even providing equipments for detection, leave aside protection. The Japanese government has been a party to this, lacking effective measures to warn shipping until reliable measurements of radioactivity in the Pacific ocean could be taken (being overwhelmed with the enormity of the crisis is not excuse enough). Neither did the Japanese Government make it mandatory for Japanese Corporations owning ships that were outrageously running them in affected waters of the Pacific, to equip vessels with radioactivity detection instruments and protective gear, training on its usage or even providing accurate information to the gullible sailors. A Japanese national is culturally someone who endures difficulties and does not express pain easily. For the sailors of non Japanese origin the Corporations ensured likewise, their anxiety never got expressed by virtue of arm-twisting, whilst blocking information from a media who were anyways disinterested in the small community of sailors and their issues. The shipping companies took full advantage of the fact that even representative bodies of sailors dance to the tune of the corporations owning and managing ships. Whilst Mrs Okoshi and Mr Kimura may come across as a ray of hope for drawing adequate attention this matter deserves by way of exposing the inadequacies of the Japanese Government in handling the crisis, the sailors who have got exposed to radiation and continue to do so will never ever have their voices heard, leave aside their exposure to radiation being ever recognized, analysed or quantified. Japanese have to take responsibility for polluting the Pacific even if unintentionally and address each affected group, besides engaging in the cleanup – Lesser contaminants get flushed in toilets by the civilized, the Pacific has been treated worse than even a toilet and enough time has elapsed for the Japanese to get their act together in this regard.

Comment by Mak C | August 9, 2011 | Reply

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