nuclear-news

Radiation in Japan’s foodstuffs – the invisible hazard

Unlike harmful iodine 131, which disappears in matter of days, caesium 137 has a “half-life” of 30 years and lingers even longer.

Radioactive discharge from the crippled power station fell directly on crops and vegetables, and worked its way into the food chain when fish or animals in affected areas consumed contaminated plants.

Japan’s invisible enemy within TOKYO, Malaysian Insider,  June 2 — Before March 11, 2011, procuring food for an average Japanese household was a pretty straight-forward affair.

Following long-established traditions, a housewife — it is, still, almost always a woman in charge — did her best to ensure that every product brought to the table could be traced to Japanese soil or waters. This, it was widely held, was the best way to avoid eating fish, meat
or produce tainted with dangerous contaminants. Chinese imports were to be avoided whenever possible.
The accident at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, unleashed by a devastating earthquake and tsunami, shattered this age-old faith in the purity of Japanese produce.
Even the country’s most cherished and emblematic staple, rice, has
been tainted in a way that was unimaginable before March 11.

The very products — many of them cultural icons — that had always been
deeply reassuring precisely because of their native origins, were
suddenly perceived as potentially poisonous, transformed overnight
from sources of comfort to objects of fear.

Nuclear radiation is scary stuff. A quarter century after Chernobyl,
and more than 65 years after atomic bombs laid waste to Hiroshima and
Nagasaki, fatally sickening thousands not killed outright, even
unfounded fears of radioactive contamination can spark panic.

Japan’s catastrophe emptied pharmacies in North America and Europe of
anti-radiation pills despite reassurances from all manner of experts
that the danger was nil……..
The partial meltdown of three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant
released caesium particles and other radioactive elements into the
air, soil and sea.

Unlike harmful iodine 131, which disappears in matter of days, caesium 137 has a “half-life” of 30 years and lingers even longer.

Radioactive discharge from the crippled power station fell directly on crops and vegetables, and worked its way into the food chain when fish or animals in affected areas consumed contaminated plants.

Even as the reactors continued to spew nuclear detritus, health
officials began to monitor radiation levels of food products around
the country and essentially quarantined a large swath of agricultural
land and fishing grounds around the plant, located some 250km
northeast of Tokyo.

But spot checks in areas well beyond Fukushima — including around the
capital — showed that potentially harmful radiation had been carried
far afield by the wind and ocean currents.

Official statements on what did or did not constitute dangerous levels
of contamination varied, adding to the confusion and concern…….
After the accident, the government raised the tolerable limit of contamination to 500Bq of caesium per kilo, following international emergency guidelines.

But consumers did not fail to see that products that previously would
have been tossed in the rubbish as potentially toxic were now on the
grocery shelf.

As of April 1, the threshold has returned to pre-accident levels:
100Bq/kg for most products, 10Bq/kg for a litre of water, and 50Bq/kg
for food consumed by infants.

But the temporary relaxing of standards nourished the widely-held idea that the government was more concerned about producers than the public.

The recent and unexpected detection of elevated radioactivity — up to
several dozen millisieverts (mSv) per hour compared to 0.2mSv before
the nuclear meltdown — in cities relatively distant from Fukushima
feeds into these suspicions.

“The wind and rain transported radioactive elements,” explained
scientist Tatsuhiko Kodama, an expert on the impacts of radioactivity.

The government had defined the large zones of contamination, but has
not been able to keep track of smaller, shifting “hot spots,” so many
people have taken to wearing inexpensive Geiger counters that bleat a
warning when radioactivity climbs…….
http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/features/article/japans-invisible-enemy-within

June 4, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | environment, Japan