nuclear-news

Fukushima disaster an ongoing health problem

Hiroshima seeks to distance itself from Fukushima despite parallels of radiation woes in Japan, WP26 Sept 13,  “……The widespread sentiment in this southwestern city, he said, is that Hiroshima has endured something more terrible than the aftermath of a nuclear accident, and people resent getting lumped together. Matsui lost relatives in the attack, and his parents’ home was destroyed.

The bombing killed some 140,000 people — some instantly, others within months. Three days later, the U.S. dropped a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki, killing an estimated 70,000 people shortly before the end of World War II. Those categorized by the government as sick from the Hiroshima bombing’s radiation still number more than 200,000.

No one is known to have died from the Fukushima radiation, but the plant’s three nuclear meltdowns will take decades to clean up and it is impossible to know what the health toll will ultimately be. Only recently has the government acknowledged that much more radioactive water is leaking into the sea than it had previously believed.

The Japanese government has detected 44 confirmed and suspected cases of thyroid cancer among the 217,000 youngsters, 18 and under, checked in Fukushima. Thyroid cancer among children is generally rare, estimated at only one in a million. The link to radiation is still inconclusive, and extensive testing of Fukushima children could account for the higher numbers.

But according to the World Health Organization, thyroid cancer struck thousands of people after the only nuclear-plant disaster worse than Fukushima, the 1986 Chernobyl meltdown in what is now Ukraine. http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/hiroshima-seeks-to-distance-itself-from-fukushima-despite-parallels-of-radiation-woes-in-japan/2013/09/26/420331b0-266e-11e3-9372-92606241ae9c_story.html

September 28, 2013 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | health, Japan