Cardiac arrests rise after 2011 Fukushima quake

….Drs. Kitamura and Iwami said in their email that they are not sure what effect the nuclear meltdown might have had on the higher rates of cardiac arrest, if any. “The news might be a stress and affect the occurrence of sudden cardiac arrest, but in this study we did not aim to evaluate the impact of the nuclear accident.”….

29 November 2013,

http://voiceofrussia.com/news/2013_11_29/Cardiac-arrests-rise-after-2011-Fukushima-quake-3938/

Japan’s 2011 Fukushima earthquake, the most powerful ever recorded in that country, generated a killer tsunami, a nuclear power plant disaster and aftershocks of another sort – a 70 percent rise in cardiac arrests, particularly among people age 75 and older, according to a new study.

Kitamura and coauthor Dr. Taku Iwami of Kyoto University Health Service said in a joint email to Reuters Health that, based on past experience, the increase was not surprising.

“Earthquake was well-known to be one of the risk factors for sudden cardiac arrest and acute coronary syndrome (heart attack),” they said. “However, little is known about the impact of earthquake on these diseases by age and sex, and in this study, showing the differences provides new insights on disaster medicine.”

Using an ambulance-based registry, they looked at weekly counts of cardiac arrest cases that occurred outside a hospital from four weeks before and eight weeks after the date March 11 in the years 2005 to 2011.

Cardiac arrest is when the heart stops beating entirely, often due to an electrical problem that causes abnormal rhythms – which in turn can be brought on by anxiety or stress or by defects in the heart. Once it stops, unless the heart is restarted within minutes, cardiac arrest is usually fatal.

Normally, roughly 75 cardiac arrests would have been expected each week during the period researchers examined. But the week after the quake itself, the number of cases jumped 70 percent compared to that week in the previous years. The number was 48 percent higher the following week.

The risk kept declining gradually – it was 47 percent higher than in pre-quake years the third week, 26 percent higher the fourth week and 25 percent higher the fifth week. In the sixth week after the disaster, the rate was close to the same as that of previous years, despite two strong aftershocks above 7.0 magnitude on April 7 and April 11.

The researchers found that not all groups were affected equally. Residents age 75 and older faced a much greater risk than younger residents, probably because of age-related risk factors, they said.

Drs. Kitamura and Iwami said in their email that they are not sure what effect the nuclear meltdown might have had on the higher rates of cardiac arrest, if any. “The news might be a stress and affect the occurrence of sudden cardiac arrest, but in this study we did not aim to evaluate the impact of the nuclear accident.”

Voice of Russia, solarnews.ph, Reuters
Read more: http://voiceofrussia.com/news/2013_11_29/Cardiac-arrests-rise-after-2011-Fukushima-quake-3938/

November 29, 2013 - Posted by arclight2011part2 | Uncategorized

3 Comments »

“The news might be a stress and affect the occurrence of sudden cardiac arrest, but in this study we did not aim to evaluate the impact of the nuclear accident,” said Drs. Iwami and Kitamura.
Of Course all supposedly caused by stress due to the earthquake , and of course not a word about Cesium-137 released by Fukushima Daiichi and its negative effects on the heart muscle….
Cesium-137 and heart consequences:
1. Cs-137 causes heart conduction changes & low cardiac output
http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/forum/218/cs-137-causes-heart-conduction-changes-low-cardiac-output.2012-12-11

2. Radioactive Cesium and Heart Chapter 4: Pathophysiological Characteristics of Effects of Radioactive Cesium on Heart http://fukushimavoice-eng.blogspot.fr/2013/02/radioactive-cesium-and-heart-chapter-4.html

According to Dr.Shuntaro Hida’s tweet (by The daily olive news), recently published Russian lucubration says that Cesium 137 is not slow-acting, but immediately damages the heart muscle. “I came to consider this can be associated with the cause of death of the workman who died of cardiac infarction. He was one of the first workmen who worked at the accident site, and died after 2 days.”
http://dissensus-japan.blogspot.fr/2012/07/high-level-of-radiation-detected-in.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+blogspot/dissensus-japan+%28DISSENSUS+JAPAN%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

4. Yury Bandazhevsky studied effects of cesium-137 on children in Belarus after Chernobyl

He found that children with just 20-30 Bq/kg of cesium-137 suffering cardiac arrhythmia (heart not beating properly) and were suffering heart attacks and dying
Not a question of cancer or leukemia (although that occurred as well), there were very high rates of heart disease in these children… manifesting heart disease usually only found in old people
Heart cells are non replaceable by-and-large
Only 1% of heart cells replaced in a year
Cesium-137 goes to muscle, so concentrates in muscle tissue of heart
It does seem from what people have been telling me in the Fukushima affected area, is they [children] are actually suffering heart attacks
Cesium-137′s effects on heart muscle cannot be repaired, heart tissue cannot be repaired
These children will suffer their whole life and die young

Post-Chernobyl Belarus showed an increase in cancer… but an “enormous” increase in heart disease

5. Cesium 137 and heart diseases –
Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment Written by Alexey V. Yablokov,Vassily B. Nesterenko,Alexey V. Nesterenko,Janette D. Sherman-Nevinger
http://books.google.fr/books?id=g34tNlYOB3AC&pg=PA62&lpg=PA62&dq=cesium+137+and+heart+diseases&source=bl&ots=O1dYhU-Wb8&sig=puGWDfv6cfPYD8pMKq2Lgu4a2Y8&hl=fr&sa=X&ei=PZqXUuPFOqKY0AWw_YAQ&ved=0CG0Q6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=cesium%20137%20and%20heart%20diseases&f=false

6. There are really two problems, both of them extremely serious because of the toxic nature of the radioactive waste materials in nuclear fuel rods, and because of the enormity of the amounts of these wastes in the rods. Each reactor generates hundreds of pounds of super-toxic plutonium-239, strontium-90, cesium-137, and iodine-131 each year. The most toxic and serious of these is plutonium; it has a half-life of 24,000 years, that is only half of its radioactivity is gone after that time. It’s “lifetime” – the time that it takes to reduce its radioactivity by 1000 – is 240,000 years. Plutonium is an “alpha” emitter; a microgram of it in your lungs will almost guarantee that you will get lung, bone, or some other internal cancer. Strontium-90 and cesium-137 are gamma and beta emitters which are absorbed in bones and muscles and cause cancer. Iodine-131 is a beta and gamma emitter which is absorbed in the thyroid gland and causes thyroid cancer.
Japan Nuclear Emergency and Worldwide Nuclear Fallout Pollution – What to Do? http://www.cqs.com/japannuclearemergency.htm

Comment by dunrenardd'un renard | November 29, 2013 | Reply
- A great set of links there Dun!! many thanks as usual
  
  Comment by arclight2011part2 | November 29, 2013 | Reply
http://fukushimaemergencywhatcanwedo.blogspot.fr/2013/11/high-cardiac-arrest-cases-recorded-in.html

Comment by dunrenard | November 29, 2013 | Reply