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Plight, and flight, of Fukushima’s farming communities

anti-nuclear activists and parents who are continuing to lobby for better protection standards for children in Fukushima insist they will not be satisfied until the government takes steps to evacuate the entire younger generation to fully safe areas. 

More than 100,000 people, mostly younger people, have left Fukushima to escape radiation contamination. ….The mass migration is bound to affect agriculture production

Trust Deficit – Worst Fallout of Fukushima, By Suvendrini Kakuchi TOKYO, Feb 22, 2012 (IPS)  “……..The past few months have seen the government scrambling to regain public trust with food grown in Fukushima and the neighbouring areas by scraping away contaminated top soil from local farms. 

Other measures include pledges to conduct new testing for cesium 137, a dangerous radioactive material, on more than 25,000 farms, establishing more stringent safety ratings from April this year and also intensifying screenings for the element in stores. 

Cesium 137 has a half-life of around 30 years and is a known cause of cancer. 

This month, the Japanese health ministry proposed a special limit of 50 becquerels (measure of cesium) per kilogram for milk and food items for infants, to lower their exposure to radiation. 

A panel of scientists has already approved the proposal, while pointing out in a release that new measures for all food items have “secured special considerations for children.” 

But anti-nuclear activists and parents who are continuing to lobby for better protection standards for children in Fukushima insist they will not be satisfied until the government takes steps to evacuate the entire younger generation to fully safe areas. 

According to estimates made by the influential Asahi Shimbun newspaper in September 2011, an area of more than 8,000 sq km had accumulated cesium 137 levels of 30,000 becquerels per sq metre. 

The estimated contaminated area covered almost half of Fukushima prefecture, the third largest in Japan, covering 13,782 sq km. It included 1,370 sq km in Tochigi, 380 sq km in Miyagi and 260 sq km in Ibaraki – prefectures adjacent to Fukushima. 

Asahi Shimbun calculated the size of the contaminated area based on a distribution map of accumulated cesium 137 levels measured from aircraft and released by the science ministry on Sep. 8, 2011. 

Fukushima and the 1986 nuclear accident at Chernobyl are both rated at ‘level 7’, the worst on the International Nuclear Event Scale because the quantities of radioactive materials released exceeded several tens of thousands of terabecquerels. 

February 23, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Japan, social effects