Why is World Health Organisation not releasing Iraq birth defects report?
What’s delaying the WHO report on Iraqi birth defects http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/06/201365101540408281.html A 2012 World 
Health Organization study on congenital birth defects in Iraq has still not been released to the public. 06 Jun 2013 Mozhgan Savabieasfahani Dr Mozhgan Savabieasfahani, a native of Iran, is an environmental toxicologist based in Michigan. She is the author of over two dozen peer reviewed articles and the book, Pollution and Reproductive Damage (DVM 2009).
Iraq is poisoned. Thirty-five million Iraqis wake up every morning to a living nightmare of childhood cancers, adult cancers and birth defects. Familial cancers, cluster cancers and multiple cancers in the same individual have become frequent in Iraq.
Sterility, repeated miscarriages, stillbirths and severe birth defects – some never described in any medical books – are all around, in increasing numbers. Trapped in this hellish nightmare, millions of Iraqis struggle to survive, and they and they call for help.
At long last, public pressure and media attention to this public health catastrophe prompted a joint study by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Iraqi Ministry of Health to determine the prevalence of birth defects in Iraq. This study began in May-June 2012 and was completed in early October 2012. Continue reading
Higherdeath rate for those living near Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant
The full report may be downloaded at www.matrr.org or www.bredl.org
Major findings of the report• Continue reading
Radiation and the ethics of sending astronauts to Mars
One thing is certain: there can be no more romantic idealism. No amount of wishful thinking, or crowdsourcing, or press releasing can circumvent this problem. Space radiation is dangerous, potentially deadly. Manned missions to Mars with current technology will carry significant exposure risks.
At what price ethically do we want the Red Planet?
Space radiation results should spark manned Mars mission debate, Guardian UK, Stuart Clark 5 June 13Nasa data shows radiation doses would be so high on a manned Mars mission that we must now debate the ethics of deep space exploration – or wait decades to develop safer technology
It is time for idealism about missions to Mars to end. Going there with current technology would carry a significant risk of harmful radiation exposure. Continue reading
Thyroid cancer in Fukushima children – nothing to worry about?
Life and Death Choices: Radiation, Children, and Japan’s Future, Truth Out, By David McNeill, The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, 4 June 13 “…….Many parents point to a recent finding that over 40 per cent of nearly 95,000 children checked by Dr Suzuki’s team had thyroid ultrasound “abnormalities”. About 35 per cent had nodules or cysts on their thyroids.
The cysts and nodules are not cancers but they point to an inevitable spike in future health problems, says Mr Fujimoto – a view contested by the government. “I have absolutely no faith in what the Fukushima government is saying,” he retorts. “They want people to go back and live there so they clearly want to keep a lid on the impact of the disaster.”
Parents accuse government scientists of making their minds up before the survey began – Professor Suzuki’s team said last July that their aim was “to calm the anxiety of the population.”
Iwata Wataru, who heads a non-profit group that measures radiation, believes that’s an abuse of science. “A scientific study is normally designed to detect an effect and lead the investigator to accept or reject a stated hypothesis,” he said. “In this case, they have a strong prior belief that there is no physical effect of exposure.” Iwata wants more independent testing.
In the absence of a consensus on the likely impact of the Fukushima accident, the debate has hardened into two sides: people like Fujimoto an Iwata who say the authorities are playing down or even covering up the disaster, and the increasingly vocal official view that their worries are overblown. Those who stray too far from the official line risk being accused of fear-mongering.
That criticism misses the point, says Mochizuki Iori, author of the blog Fukushima Diary. “I was exposed in the first week,” he writes. “It’s irreversible. Not so many people can share this feeling in the world. I check my thyroid, lymph and symptoms of other things that I don’t even want to mention.”
Doctors say children’s thyroids, which help regulate the body’s metabolism, are especially sensitive to radioactive iodine. The gland is very active during childhood development. A study published last year in the International Journal of Cancer found elevated risks of thyroid cancer in childhood survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 50 years after they were exposed to radiation. The study found over a third of 191 thyroid cancers in adults who were children at the time of the bombing were probably due to exposure. <link>
Whatever the scientists say, Mr. Fujimoto insists he won’t be persuaded by government reassurances that it is safe to return to Fukushima. “There is so much information not getting out at the moment. It will be too late for my children when it is eventually released.”
http://truth-out.org/news/item/16768-life-and-death-choices-radiation-children-and-japans-future
EPA Dramatically Weakens Radiation Protection
Fukushima Radiation Risk Media Deception, Lynda Lovon 3 June 13 ………“The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is publishing in the Federal Register today controversial new Protective Action Guides (PAGs) for responding to radioactive releases. EPA says it solicits public comment but is nonetheless making the PAGs immediately effective.
Fukushima children and thyroid abnormalities: predictions of thyroid cancers
“Rates of thyroid problems in children near Fukushima nuclear plant are high” — Expert: Parents have reason to worry — Gov’t accused of cover-up http://enenews.com/rates-of-thyroid-problems-in-children-near-fukushima-nuclear-plant-are-high-expert-parents-have-reason-to-worry-govt-accused-of-cover-up
Source: The Independent
Author: David McNeill
Date: June 1, 2013
h/t Anonymous tip Rates of thyroid problems in children near the nuclear plant are high
[…] Last December, the eldest of the two was diagnosed with adenoidal cysts, the prelude to a type of cancer that often strikes the salivary glands. “I was told by the doctor that it’s very rare,” [Yoji Fujimoto] says. […]
“I’m convinced this is because of the Fukushima accident.” […]
[Steve Wing, an epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina] says that parents like Mr Fujimoto do have reason to worry. “We know that doses to populations are both unquantified by the official agencies, that evidence suggests relatively high doses, and that children and women are more vulnerable to radiation. So the questions and deep concerns for the people in Fukushima will continue for the rest of their lives.” […]
“I expect a growth in the numbers of thyroid cancers in Japan from next year,” [Dr Alexey Yablokov, a Russian biologist] said. […]
Parents accuse government scientists of making their minds up before the [thyroid] survey began – Professor Suzuki’s team said last July that their aim was “to calm the anxiety of the population”.
Yoji Fujimoto
“I have absolutely no faith in what the Fukushima government is saying”
“They want people to go back and live there so they clearly want to keep a lid on the impact of the disaster”
“There is so much information not getting out at the moment — It will be too late for my children when it is eventually released”
See also: UN: “Fukushima nuclear disaster poses no IMMEDIATE health risks” — Unknown if increase in thyroid cancer is due to radioactivity
Good news: ionising radiation type scanners removed from airports across USA
Full-body scanners at airports replaced with less-revealing, low radiation machines http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/local&id=9125985 June 03, 2013 — Airports across the U.S. have removed the full-body scanners that used x-rays to create what looks like nude images of passengers.
The remaining 250 machines were removed about two weeks before the June 1st deadline set by Congress.Some critics said they were too revealing, while others expressed health concerns over radiation exposure.
Passengers still have to undergo full-body scans. However, the scanners now use radio waves that produce a less-detailed image.
Harm from radiation, among families of nuclear workers
Some Atomic Energy Workers Passed Effects of Radiation and Chemical Exposure to their Spouses and Children Huntington News, June 3, 2013 – BY TONY E. RUTHERFORD, NEWS EDITOR “……“Big Jim” took a job working around radioactive elements in 1954 at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant (PGDP) in Piketon, Ohio. Workers told his daughter how they kept their lunches warm by laying them on uranium yellow cakes and poked fun of individuals who put around their clothing before painting. They wore radiation exposure badges, but by “doing his job” Jim later developed four cancers.
“My dad talked about the A plant, but he never told us what it was,” Joan Fearing (Big Jim’s daughter) said. “Mom washed his work clothes.” She passed away from a rare form of cancer too. “When my mother was dying, she still did not tell us what it was.”
The Cold War ended the arms race. Nuclear weapons were replaced with atoms for peace at electrical power plants. However, the atomic legacy appears passed to the 21st Century. Continue reading
Compensation for Fukushima evacuees’ radiation anxiety
Fukushima Evacuees To Get Radiation Uncertainty Compensation http://www.rttnews.com/2128844/fukushima-evacuees-to-get-radiation-uncertainty-compensation.aspx?type=gn&utm_source=google&utm_campaign=sitemap 6/3/2013 A government-backed arbitration body in Japan directed the operator of the tsunami-wrecked Fukushima nuclear power plant to pay compensation to former residents of a district for radiation exposure and future healthuncertainties.
As per a directive issued by the Nuclear Damage Claim Dispute Resolution Center, the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) has to pay about $10,000 each to pregnant women and those aged below 18 years. The other residents of Nagadoro district would get $5,000 each, Japanese media reported on Sunday.
Nagadoro is near the Fukushima plant where radiation levels remain high and it is the only district that the government declared uninhabitable for a long period.
An evacuation order for the area was issued more than a month after the nuclear accident on March 11, 2011. The arbitrators accepted the residents’ claim of fear and anxiety as they had lived without any protection against high radiation doses because of their delayed evacuation. The residents had already received compensation for having to evacuate, but the amount did not cover health anxieties. Lawyers representing the residents said it was for the first time that compensation for health anxietywas granted.
The massive tsunami severely damaged four reactors at the Fukushima plant north of Tokyo, knocking out its cooling systems and triggering meltdowns and radiation leaks. Tens of thousands of people fled their homes in the worst atomic disaster since the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident.
Huge radiation health danger for astronauts going to Mars
Curiosity flew to Mars in a spacecraft that had shielding similar to what astronauts would have on the new crew vehicle being developed by NASA. The detector picked up an average of 1.8 millisieverts of radiation per day. A human being on the surface of the Earth receives only about 3 millisieverts of radiation in an entire year.
“The radiation environment in deep space is several hundred times more intense than it is on Earth, and that’s even inside a shielded spacecraft,”
“The radiation exposure on a trip to Mars would — barring a super-huge solar event — not be lethal. The concerns are mostly about cancer induction (a so-called ‘late effect’) and damage to the central nervous system,”
Space radiation would make Mars mission hazardous WP, By Joel Achenbach, May 30 Of all the hazards facing a human mission to Mars — something NASA and countless space buffs would love to see at some point — one of the hardest to solve is the radiation that saturates interplanetary space. New data, gathered by NASA’s Curiosity rover as it traveled to Mars, have confirmed that interplanetary space is a hostile medium and suggest that engineers need to find a way to speed up space travel significantly if they hope to reduce radiation exposure……
The effects of interplanetary radiation on the human body are not well understood. Until now, scientists had limited information about how much radiation penetrates a spacecraft during an interplanetary journey. But the Curiosity rover, which bristles with instruments, carried along a Radiation Assessment Detector, and it measured the incoming radiation during its 253-day trip to Mars, which began in November 2011. Continue reading
Two head CT scans double one’s risk of cancer from radiation
the risk of having soft-tissue sarcoma will be doubled under an exposure equal to radiation from two CT head scans.
Low levels of medical radiation can cause cancer, HKU study warns http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1250953/low-levels-medical-radiation-can-cause-cancer-hku-study-warns Even low levels emitted by X-rays and CT scans can cause cancer, and people who often get whole-body checks are at risk, HKU study says, 01 June, 2013 Emily Tsang emily.tsang@scmp.com Worries have been raised about the overuse of radiation in medicine after a study shows that even low levels of radiation – such as those emitted by X-rays and CT scans – can cause cancer.
The risk of soft-tissue sarcoma is doubled if a person receives an amount of radiation equivalent to two CT head scans, University of Hong Kong researchers say. This means that people who join a growing
trend of getting frequent whole-body checks including X-rays and scans are putting themselves at risk, the researchers say, adding that authorities should also reconsider the risks of nuclear power.
“The study has highlighted that even low to moderate levels of exposure are enough to cause genetic mutation,” study leader Dino Samartzis said. Continue reading
More radiation exposure when contrast medium is used with CT scans
Radiation dose increased for every organ scanned at CT, particularly in the most vascularized tissues, wrote researchers from the University of Messina in Italy. Average doses rose by one-fifth for the liver, one-third for the spleen and pancreas, and almost three-fourths for the kidneys.
“The results are in agreement with our previous data, confirming an increase in organ radiation dose in contrast-enhanced CT compared with unenhanced CT,” wrote Dr. Ernesto Amato and colleagues (AJR, June 2013, Vol. 200:6, pp. 1288-1293)……
Investigators have also found an increase in the frequency of cellular abnormalities in patients who underwent contrast-enhanced radiographic examinations. But the actual increase in dose for any given scan — which depends on iodine uptake; the shape, volume, and position of the organ; and the emitted x-ray energy spectrum — remains unknown, the authors wrote…….
Confirming dose increases
The results were in line with the group’s previous phantom study, and they confirmed significant radiation dose increases in contrast-enhanced CT versus unenhanced CT, Amato and colleagues wrote. The data showed average dose increases of 19% for the liver, 71% for the kidneys, 33% for the spleen and pancreas, and 41% for the thyroid.
“The kidneys showed the maximum among the average dose [increases] (71%, resulting from an attenuation increment of 139 HU),” the authors wrote.”High renal enhancement is, in fact, due to both their high vascularization because they receive 20% to 25% of the cardiac output and the passage of iodine within the renal tubules. In particular, the level of contrast medium within renal tubules can be up to 50 to 100 times higher than that in the blood because of the mechanisms of tubular concentration and secretion.”
Thyroid tissue showed the second highest dose increase (41%) after contrast injection, based on an HU increase of 87%. Also, the dose increases in the thyroid depended on tissue density on unenhanced CT, the group noted. Denser thyroids showed a lower increase in attenuation and, consequently, lower increases in dose.
Because the liver and spleen are richly vascularized, Hounsfield units increased with contrast by 49 HU and 71 HU, respectively, and average dose increased by 19% and 33%……. http://www.auntminnie.com/index.aspx?sec=ser&sub=def&pag=dis&ItemID=103565
Astronauts going to Mars face a radiation cancer death sentence
Radiation on trip to Mars near life limit HERALD SUN, AAP MAY 31, 2013 ASTRONAUTS who travel on future missions to Mars would likely be exposed to their lifetime limit of radiation during the trip, not to mention time spent on the Red Planet, scientists say.
The measurements were made aboard the Mars Science Laboratory, an unmanned NASA rover and mobile lab that set off for Mars in 2011 before landing 253 days later in August 2012, said the report in the US journal Science.
“In terms of accumulated dose, it’s like getting a whole-body CT scan once every five or six days,” said Cary Zeitlin, a principal scientist in Southwest Research Institute’s (SwRI) Space Science and Engineering Division.
“Radiation exposure at the level we measured is right at the edge, or possibly over the edge of what is considered acceptable in terms of career exposure limits defined by NASA and other space agencies.”
Zeitlin said more study is needed to determine the actual health risks — including the likelihood of developing cancer — associated with exposure to cosmic radiation before any human trip to Mars can take place.
The US space agency has said it is aiming for the first-ever astronaut mission to Mars some time in the 2030s…….. HTTP://WWW.HERALDSUN.COM.AU/NEWS/BREAKING-NEWS/RADIATION-ON-TRIP-TO-MARS-NEAR-LIFE-LIMIT/STORY-FNI0XQLL-1226654163809
UN calls on Japan to help Fukushima victims more
UN asks Japan, operator to help nuclear power plant victims Times Live, Sapa-AP | 26 May, 2013 A United Nations expert who investigated the aftermath of Japan’s 2011 nuclear power plant disaster says the government and the operator of the facility should do more to help those affected by the catastrophe.
A report by special rapporteur Anand Grover, posted on the UN Human Rights Council’s website, says the government’s takeover of Tokyo Electric Power Co. allowed the utility to evade full responsibility for the nuclear disaster, the worst since Chernobyl. The report points to problems with the handling of the crisis, including a difficult process for seeking compensation for radiation exposure, a lack of openness about health risks from radiation and inadequate protection for nuclear plant workers.
It urges Japan to improve its emergency preparedness and its handling of compensation claims.
The Geneva-based council is due to discuss the report, compiled after a visit to Japan by Grover late last year, at its general meeting starting Monday.
Japan’s atomic energy industry remains in crisis more than two years after a powerful earthquake and tsunami triggered meltdowns in three reactors at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant…… http://www.timeslive.co.za/scitech/2013/05/26/un-asks-japan-operator-to-help-nuclear-power-plant-victims
Fukushima’s radioactive contamination spreads in marine life
Japan Radiation Widely Contaminates Pacific Marine Life http://www.earthweek.com/2013/ew130524/ew130524b.html 24 May 13, Traces of radioactive cesium from Japan’s crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant have been found in water and plankton collected
from all 10 points monitored across a vast stretch of the western Pacific.
The isotopes cesium-134 and cesium-137 were found in the tiny plantlike creatures from the coast of Japan’s Hokkaido Island to Guam.
The samples were taken early last year, less than a year after the tsunami that overwhelmed the plant, but the findings were just
announced at a meeting of the Japan Geoscience Union.
Cesium-134 has a half-life of two years while it takes 30 years for cesium-137 to decay by half. Scientists say the isotopes were being dispersed across the Pacific in plankton, and were accumulating up the food chain as the tiny creatures were eaten by larger marine life.
Further studies are being conducted to see how much cesium was building up in fish and possibly marine mammals.
Radiation was flushed into the Pacific after three meltdowns occurred at the Fukushima nuclear plant. More than two years after the March 2011 disaster, plant operators are struggling to contain the 400 tons of radioactive water poured over the melted cores of reactors 1, 2 and 3 to prevent the fuel from melting and burning again.
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