Post-tsunami deaths outnumber disaster toll in Fukushima caused by depression

….However, with the aid of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), EEG and positron emissions tomography (PET) it is possible to prove that cerebral changes in Chernobyl liquidators and veterans of the first Gulf War, as well as the war in Bosnia, are very similar….(Ratical article below)

…Campaigners say the sense of impermanence and the fracturing of families and communities has led to a marked increase in medical problems among evacuees, especially mental illnesses like depression….

….While both Iwate and Miyagi suffered higher tolls in the initial disaster, the number of indirect deaths in both prefectures is lower than in Fukushima, at 434 and 879 respectively.

The small Fukushima city of Minamisoma has been the worst-hit, with 447 deaths indirectly blamed on the disaster, followed by 317 in Namie town and 225 in Tomioka town….

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asiapacific/post-tsunami-deaths/1006448.html

Health complications stemming from Japan’s 2011 tsunami have killed more people in one Japanese region than the disaster itself, the local authority said on Thursday.

TOKYO: Health complications stemming from Japan’s 2011 tsunami have killed more people in one Japanese region than the disaster itself, the local authority said on Thursday.

Data compiled by officials and police show that almost three years after the huge waves smashed ashore, 1,656 people living in Fukushima prefecture have died from stress and other illnesses related to the disaster, compared with 1,607 who were killed in the initial calamity.

“The biggest problem is the fact that people have been living in temporary conditions for so long,” Hiroyuki Harada, a Fukushima official dealing with victim assistance, told AFP.

“People have gone through dramatic changes of their environment. As a result, people who would not have died are dying,” he said.

Along with the prefectures of Miyagi and Iwate, Fukushima was one of the worst hit parts of Japan when a huge 9.0 undersea earthquake sent a wall of water barrelling into the coast.

The waves swept more than 18,000 people to their deaths across the country, and destroyed entire communities.

Fukushima was also hit with the resulting nuclear disaster after cooling systems at the Daiichi nuclear plant were knocked out, sending reactors into meltdown and forcing the evacuation of tens of thousands of people.

Almost three years on, many people remain displaced, whether because their homes around the power plant have not been declared safe or because rebuilding along the coast has been slow.

Officials say that as well as those who died in the early stages of the disaster, through lack of initial care because medical facilities were hobbled, a growing number of people are dying from the physical and mental stress of staying at shelters, including through suicide.

Physical and mental stress

Some families of those who have killed themselves have tried to hold plant operator Tokyo Electric Power company accountable through the legal system.

Last year, relatives of Hisashi Tarukawa won an out-of-court settlement after the 64-year-old hanged himself from a tree in a vegetable field when authorities banned the shipment of some farm produce from Fukushima.

“This is different from normal, natural disasters. People who live in shelters are forced to live there, away from their home towns and villages, where they lived for a long time,” Harada said.

“They are forced to live the kinds of lives they are not used to.”

According to the Reconstruction Agency, up until September, around 90 per cent of those dying from indirect causes were 66 or older, Kyodo News reported.

While both Iwate and Miyagi suffered higher tolls in the initial disaster, the number of indirect deaths in both prefectures is lower than in Fukushima, at 434 and 879 respectively.

The small Fukushima city of Minamisoma has been the worst-hit, with 447 deaths indirectly blamed on the disaster, followed by 317 in Namie town and 225 in Tomioka town.

Parts of Minamisoma and all of Namie and Tomioka remain off-limits because of still-elevated radiation levels.

A large tract around Fukushima remains either out-of-bounds or somewhere people are only permitted to make brief day visits. Scientists say some areas may have to be abandoned, but politicians are reluctant to formalise that step.

Other people have fled areas that are officially declared safe, unwilling to trust government pronouncements.

Many communities are now scattered throughout the northeast, living with relatives or in rented apartments, while some remain in the flimsy pre-fabricated homes that were thrown up in the months after the disaster.

Campaigners say the sense of impermanence and the fracturing of families and communities has led to a marked increase in medical problems among evacuees, especially mental illnesses like depression.

– AFP/fa

Further reading

2.4 Psychological disorders

http://www.ratical.org/radiation/Chernobyl/HEofC25yrsAC.html#02.04

In their January 13, 1993 issue, the Moscow Times quoted a study showing that 80 percent of 1,600 liquidators examined in a clinic in St. Petersburg were suffering from serious psychological problems.[35] 40 percent of victims seeking medical help were found to be suffering from neural disorders such as loss of memory.

Tens of thousands of liquidators suffer from dysphasia, depression, memory dysfunction and concentration problems.[36] Julia V. Malova, psychiatrist at the Moscow Centre for radiation diseases where she is especially concerned with liquidators’ health, explained: “Our theory is that, in some way, the flow of blood to the brain has been, and possibly still is, reduced.” These types of illnesses occur significantly more often amongst liquidators than the rest of the population.

Another complex of symptoms found particularly often amongst liquidators is the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS). According to Loganovsky (2000, 2003) the diagnostic criteria for CFS apply to 26% of people that received a radiation exposure of less than 0.3 sievert. The frequency of CFS has decreased from 65.5% of liquidators in 1990-1995 to 10.5% in 1995-2001, while the so-called Metabolic Syndrome X (MSX) has simultaneously increased from 15 to 48.2%. CFS and MSX are regarded as being symptomatic of the development of other neuro-psychiatric and physical illnesses. CFS is also regarded as being synonymous with environmentally influenced vulnerability to, and an indication of the onset of neuro-degeneration, of cognitive impairment and neuro-psychiatric disturbances. The left side of the brain appears to be more vulnerable than the right side.

P. Flor-Henry reported that the observed depressive status-displays and clinical syndromes such as schizophrenia and CFS, that prevail amongst a high percentage of the liquidators, are accompanied by organic changes in the brain, mainly in the left cerebrum (by right-handers) and can be objectified with the aid of the electroencephalogram (EEG). They believe this indicates that various neurological and psychiatric illnesses can be caused by exposure to radiation levels between 0.15 and 0.5 Sievert.

Symptoms are also expressed in the form of the premature aging phenomenon. These neurological clinical pictures appear earlier, and more severely, the younger the victim was at the time of exposure to radiation.

Flor-Henry also reported that similar clinical syndromes, which are accompanied by EEG changes in the left cerebrum, have also been observed amongst liquidators suffering from acute radiation syndrome. It surprises him that neither these psychiatric illnesses nor EEG-changes have appeared amongst the Russian veterans of the lost war in Afghanistan. These soldiers had, after all, been subject to enormous levels of traumatic stress but, unlike the Chernobyl liquidator, had not been treated as heroes in their homeland. However, with the aid of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), EEG and positron emissions tomography (PET) it is possible to prove that cerebral changes in Chernobyl liquidators and veterans of the first Gulf War, as well as the war in Bosnia, are very similar. Flor-Henry attributes this to the use of projectiles containing uranium (depleted Uranium, DU), in both the Gulf and Bosnian wars, which released uranium-238-oxide dust into the air upon impact, allowing it to be inhaled. He has found that those victims who were exposed to uranium-238 developed similar neuropsychiatric syndromes as the atom bomb survivors of Japan in 1945.

A neurological study by L.A. Zhavoronkova from the Institute of Neurophysiology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and N.B. Kholodova from the Institute of Radiology, Ministry of Public Health,[37] found liquidators’ higher cognitive and psychological functions to be impaired: sluggishness of thought, increased fatigue, reduced visual and verbal memory functions, and diminished higher motor functions. The findings are similar to those for premature aging.

Another study within the framework of the French-German Chernobyl Initiative, using standardised structured psychiatric interviews (Romanenko et al. 2004), put the extent of mental disturbance amongst liquidators at 36% and at 20.5% for the entire Ukrainian population. The increased frequency of depressions turned out to be really dramatic: 24.5% amongst liquidators and 9.1% for the general population in Ukraine (Demyttenaere et al. 2004)

A progressive increase in neuro-psychiatric disturbances has also been noticed amongst liquidators who worked in the restricted zone around Chernobyl from 1986 until 1987, and in particular amongst those who spent 3 to 5 years there. The increased frequency of neuro-psychiatric disturbances amongst the workforce who had been there since 1986/1987 and received radiation doses of more than 250 millisievert (mSv), was put at 80.5% and for radiation doses under 250 mSv at 21.4% (p<0,001) (Nyagu et al. 2004). Loganovsky reported that since 1990, there has been an increase of schizophrenic disease: 5.4 per 10,000 amongst the workforce as compared to 1.1 per 10,000 in the general population. The schizophrenia incident rate amongst the people living and working in the Chernobyl zone rose 2.4-fold in the period 1986-1997 and 3.4-fold in the period 1990-1997 (Loganovsky & Loganovskaya, 2000) as compared to the rest of the Ukrainian population.

Strahlentelex 146-147.1993, 4f., Moskau: Nervenkrank durch Tschernobyl. [Moscow: psychological illness due to Chernobyl]. Based on a report in the Frankfurter Rundschau. (German).

Julia V. Malova, Russian Scientific Centre of Radiology, Psychological Rehabilitation, Moscow, 18. UICC International Cancer Congress Oslo 2002, Abstract No. O 183: Cancer patients – the participants of the liquidation of the consequences of the Chernobyl explosion: the aims and the recourses of the psychological rehabilitation. Strahlentelex 374-375/2002, 9, Verminderte Hirnfuktionen bei Katastrophenhelfern [Reduced brain function in disaster aid workers] (German). Die tageszeitung (taz) July 16, 2002.

ISSN 0362_1197, Human Physiology, 2010, Vol. 36, No. 4, pp. 388-398. © Pleiades Publishing, Inc., 2010.
Original Russian Text © L.A. Zhavoronkova, A.P. Belostocky, M.A. Koulikov, S.V. Kuptsova, N.B. Kholodova, L.B. Oknina, 2010, published in Fiziologiya Cheloveka, 2010, Vol. 36, No. 4, pp. 22-33.