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Uranium: a genetic poison that targets DNA

radiation-warningAfter Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a Third Nuclear Atrocity: the Corruption of Science, CounterPunch, by CHRIS BUSBY 19 AUG 15 “……… The origin was the “black rain” which contained Uranium-235, Uranium-238 and particularly Uranium-234, which is the missing exposure, and is probably responsible for most of the cancer effects in all the survivors. We know that the Uranium was there because it was measured by Japanese scientists in 1983.

A recently declassified US document tabulates the enormous U-234 content of the enriched Uranium used in the bombs, codename: Oralloy. The Uranium nanoparticles in the Hiroshima (and Nagasaki) black rain were available for inhalation by all the exposure groups in the ruins of Hiroshima for years after the bomb.

All the bombs were made of Uranium, about 1 ton per Megaton yield. For all those tests in Nevada, the Marshall Islands, Kazakhstan, Christmas Island, the results were the same: down came the nanoparticles to be inhaled by anyone nearby and distant.

Why does this matter? New research has been carried out on Uranium. We find that Uranium targets DNA through chemical affinity. This causes terrible and anomalous genetic damage, out or all proportion to its “dose” as calculated by ICRP. Other fallout components also bind chemically to DNA, e.g. Strontium-90, Barium-140.

Those exposed: Uranium miners, Gulf Veterans, Test Veterans, DU civilians, Nuclear Uranium workers, Nuclear Site downwinders, all suffer chromosome damage, cancer, leukemia, heart disease, the works. All this is published, as are the results of laboratory and theoretical studies showing mechanisms. But in the Lancet: nothing.

S L Simon and A Bouville who wrote the article on the health effects of the nuclear testing did not even mention Uranium there, nor in their epic 2010 study of the Marshall Islands exposures. The Nevada site data that they used for their baseline calculations ignored it totally.

In 2012, I made a presentation for the Marshall Islanders at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, attacking the Simon et al analysis. In their Lancet nuclear test article, Simon and Bouville major on Iodine effects. So let’s look at those.

Scientific evidence from Fukushima: massive excess of thyroid cancers

In Fukushima Prefecture, surveys have confirmed 103 thyroid cancers in 380,000 18-year olds (25 or so are still being checked out). The Lancet article by Wakeford et al. presents an excess Relative Risk culled from the Hiroshima studies of 0.6 per Sievert (Fig 2 p 473). In the very same issue, the maximum thyroid dose was given as 18mSv with the median dose as 0.67mSv.

So in the two years of screening, if everyone screened got the maximum thyroid dose of 18mSv we should expect an increase of 0.018 x 0.6 = 0.011, a 1.1% increase in the background rate. This background is about 1 per 100,000 per year or 7.6 in two years in 380,000. So the radiation should increase this to 7.7 cases (i.e. one extra case in 10 years).

There are 103, that is 95 more cases than expected, an error in the ICRP model of 95/0.14 = 678-fold. That is, there are 678 times more thyroid cancers than the Hiroshima-based ICRP model predicts.

This calculation is based on what was written in The Lancet – but nobody made the calculation. This on its own should show the authorities (and the public) that the game is up. But instead of doing the simple calculation, another article in The Lancet, written by Geoff Watts, praises the work of those at Fukushima Medical University, who are busy telling everyone that the increases in thyroid cancer cannot be caused by the radiation.

In other words, once again, the predictions from Hiroshima are believed, rather than the evidence in front of their eyes. It’s a kind of mass hypnosis (or maybe not)…….” http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/08/19/after-hiroshima-and-nagasaki-a-third-nuclear-atrocity-the-corruption-of-science/

August 20, 2015 Posted by | 2 WORLD, radiation, Reference | Leave a comment

Pro nuclear search for making ionising radiation look good

quackThe Israeli scientist who’s poisoning herself to find a vaccine for nuclear radiation http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/israeli-scientist-invents-vaccine-against-nuclear-radiation–but-is-she-just-poisoning-herself-10462040.html A retired medical professor thinks she has discovered a method for vaccinating against the effects of a nuclear fallout – and has been slowly poisoning herself in a bid to prove it.

Professor Brenda Laster’s theory, so far tested only on herself and mice, is that the body can be taught to react to radiation in the same way that traditional vaccinations can teach it to react to diseases.

Studies from nuclear disasters such as Chernobyl and Fukushima have shown that high doses of radiation cause the body to produce large and ultimately fatal quantities of hydrogen peroxide.

But experts say that less research has been done on lower doses of radiation – if, for instance, a person was an intermediate distance from the fallout itself.

Before Professor Laster retired, she was the director of the radiology lab at the Department of Nuclear Engineering at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel.

And she believes that delivering the body small doses of hydrogen peroxide, over a long period of time, would teach it how to respond in the event of a much larger attack.

Speaking to the Times of Israel, she said she had documented “an immune response” in mice three weeks after they began drinking water laced with hydrogen peroxide.

She is so confident in her theory that she started taking the solution too, up to five drops a day, “the day [we started] giving it to the mice”.

She said: “No one understands this concept. No one makes the connection between radiation viruses and bacteria and so on. People just don’t do it.”

According to the university where she taught, Professor Laster’s laboratory was set up to investigate “the biological effects of exposure to low-dose ionising radiation” in 2010 with a $500,000 donation.

That funding has now run out, however, and Professor Laster needs more money if she is going to get more mice to progress with her research.

But not everyone thinks the avenue of investigation is worthwhile. Dr Zvi Symon, the director of the Sheba Medical Center’s radiation department, told The Times the theory “sounds wild”.

“Exposing people to small amounts of radiation or to free radicals is a wild and actually dangerous, probably, idea,” he said. “I don’t think it has any scientific merit.”

August 20, 2015 Posted by | Israel, radiation | Leave a comment

Mururoa nuclear test victims affected by nuclear fallout

Mururoa-test-1971Mururoa nuclear testing witness spent years in pain, group seeks answers, Mururoa Veterans, SIMON EDWARDS, August 17 2015 There’s no doubt in Christine Hapuku’s mind that her late brother’s health problems stemmed from his exposure to fallout from the French nuclear testing at Mururoa Atoll.

At the weekend Christine and Alec Gage’s wider family unveiled his headstone at Wainuiomata’s Memorial Garden, a year ago almost to the day since his death.

……..Gage was a sailor on HMNZS Otago, which with the frigate Canterbury sailed to Mururoa in 1973 to protest the nuclear testing by France.   He and his brother Bob, who was also on board, would talk about standing on the ship’s deck wearing metal discs around their necks that were to measure how much radiation they absorbed.  The pair said the atmospheric testing fall-out was like fine rain, Hapuku said.

“Even the French acknowledged the bombs were a lot stronger than they were meant to be.

“Those discs were collected and never seen again.”

…….Christine Hapuku said medical researchers used to talk to Alec when he was in hospital but they never heard anything more.  She is hoping further research being pursued by the Mururoa veterans’ group might give the family some closure.

The Mururoa Nuclear Veterans Group is searching for all those who sailed to Mururoa Atoll in 1973 aboard HMNZS Canterbury and HMNZS Otago. The group, formed in 2013 and registered as a Legal Society, monitors the medical conditions that have affected not only the personnel aboard the two frigates but also their children and grandchildren.

The group’s president, Wayne O’Donnell, said because there was no full list of the veterans who served at Mururoa they need the public’s help.

“Unfortunately over the years contact has been lost with the widows and children of those who have ‘crossed the bar’ and we need to make contact with these people so they can be informed of any findings.”

The group established a trust fund to enable the medical testing of the veterans’ children and grandchildren. “It is hoped the results will establish the truth of the genetic transfer of illnesses related to the nuclear exposure encountered by the crews,” O’Donnell says.
……Anyone with information should emailadmin@mururoavets.org.nz

August 17, 2015 Posted by | health, New Zealand | Leave a comment

Nuclear nations raise “allowable” limits of ionising radiation – knowing that this is unsafe

text ionisingdamchodronma, 15 Aug 15,  This is why the policy of nuclear nations is to raise ‘allowable’ limits for nuclear workers and the population generally when there are accidents… and since Atomic Age began. Contamination gets worse, it is worse for all life, but nothing about it is really safe or acceptable. It’s propaganda.

“The evidence from the Chernobyl affected territories reveals the real-world consequences of a simple and terrible new discovery: that the effects of low dose internal irradiation cause subtle changes in the genome that result in an increase in the general mutation rate. … first seen in cells in the laboratory. The Chernobyl evidence, shows that this seems to be true for all species, for plants and
animals and humans. It has profound implications that go beyond radiation protection and risk models.

“Krysanov …find that mice living in the high irradiation zone, 22 generations after the initial exposure, are MORE radiosensitive than mice living in lower exposure areas. The same effect is reported for plants by Grodzhinsky who wryly points out that plants cannot exhibit the ‘radiophobia’ that many of the Chernobyl effects have been blamed on. This flies in the face of current ideas about genetic selection.

“The effects of genomic instability are apparent in the evidence of massive harm to the organs and systems of living creatures at low doses of internal exposure, resulting in a kind of radiation ageing associated with random mutations in all cells. At the higher doses in the ‘liquidators’, after some years, their bodies seem to simply fall apart. In an astonishing statement we hear from Yablokov that in Moscow 100% of the liquidators are sick, in Leningrad 85%. These are men that ran like hares into the radiation fields with improvised lead waistcoats cut from roofs and who, by stabilising the situation at the reactor, saved Europe from a nuclear explosion equivalent to 50 Hiroshima Bombs – an outcome that would have made most of it uninhabitable. They are forgotten.

[THEY SIMPLY FALL APART]

“WHOLE BIOLOGICAL SYSTEMS COLLAPSE; at the cell level, at the tissue level and at the population level. Burlakova and Nazarov describe these subtle effects at lower doses of internal irradiation in laboratory cell systems and also people, Grodzhinsky shows the effects in plants, – higher for internal exposures than external, Krysanov shows the effects in wild animals and Yablokov and the Nesterenkos in the children and adults living and continuing to live in the contaminated territories. The effects clearly operate at what are presently thought to be vanishingly low doses.”

“ECRR Chernobyl: 20 Years On” (2006) pg 2
ECRR = European Committee on Radiation Risk
Dr. Chris Busby, Scientific Secretary wrote Introduction.
co-edited with Dr. Alexey Yablokov
http://life-upgrade.com/DATA/chernobylebook.pdf
Spanish http://ciaramc.org/ciar/boletines/cr_bol226.htm

August 15, 2015 Posted by | 2 WORLD, environment, radiation, Reference | Leave a comment

One living witness to the history of Hiroshima bombing survivors

Survivor Koko Kondo shares horror of Hiroshima’s ground zero by: YUKA HAYASHI The Wall Street Journal August 06, 2015 Every year, Koko Tanimoto Kondo tours her hometown carrying the tiny, tattered pink tunic she wore on the day, 70 years ago, she and her family survived the world’s first atomic bombing.On storytelling tours around the August 6 anniversary, Ms Kondo, who was eights months old when the bomb hit, tells ­students about the devastation that destroyed her home and haunted her for decades.She recalls when her American fiance abandoned her days before their wedding because his relatives thought radiation ­exposure had made her unable to bear children.

She shares the humiliation she felt as a teenager, standing naked on a stage while doctors and ­scientists scrutinised her for signs of radiation’s long-term effects on the body.

She offers tales of ordinary Americans who sent food and built homes for the victims, and continued for decades after the war to send cheques on birthdays to sons and daughters of Hiroshima connected through “moral adoption”.Ms Kondo’s father, Kiyoshi Tanimoto, was a US-educated minister at a church in Japan. When Hersey visited Hiroshima in the spring of 1946, Tanimoto shared with him a detailed ­account of the horror and chaos he witnessed. In the book, Tanimoto is described as passing by “rank on rank of the burned and bleeding”, scurrying to find water for dying victims, and removing a dead body from a rowboat to carry those who were still alive, after apologising to the dead man for doing so.

Ms Kondo and her mother were buried under the parsonage of her father’s church. Her ­mother managed to hoist her out of the rubble after chipping away at “a chink of light” that they could eventually fit through. When Tanimoto was reunited with his wife and baby, he was “so tired that nothing could surprise him”. Hersey wrote in his ­account, which first appeared in the New Yorkermagazine in ­August 1946, a year after Hiroshima and Nagasaki became the first and only cities in history to experience a nuclear bombing………..

Ms Kondo shows the visitors where her father’s church stood before it collapsed, burying her under the rubble. She takes them to the river her father crossed in a rowboat to carry victims, some grotesquely burned, to escape the devastation. They go to the Red Cross Hospital, where thousands went for refuge. Ms Kondo’s brief appearance in the book Hiroshima, by journalist John Hersey, set her on a path to become a messenger from ground zero. http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/wall-street-journal/survivor-koko-kondo-shares-horror-of-hiroshimas-ground-zero/story-fnay3ubk-1227471529950?from=public_rss&utm_source=The%20Australian&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=editorial

August 7, 2015 Posted by | Japan, social effects, weapons and war | Leave a comment

China sends back infant milk formula to Fukushima

The principle radioactive poison that is being tested for in Japanese foods is cesium-137. Unfortunately, there are also other deadly poisons that have been spewed in lesser amounts by Fukushima disaster. These include americium-241, plutonium-236, uranium-238, thorium-232 and the extremely dangerous isotope, strontium-90. All of these contaminants may also be found in food from Japan, including in baby formula.

Fukushima Baby Milk Formula Declared Unfit by China http://www.huntingtonnews.net/11938  August 5, 2015 –  BY JOHN LAFORGE Chinese authorities seized more than 881 pounds of baby milk formula that had been imported from Japan because it had been produced in areas known to be heavily contaminated with radioactive material emitted by three damaged nuclear reactors at the Fukushima-Daiichi complex. Continue reading →

August 7, 2015 Posted by | children, China, Japan | Leave a comment

How radioactive isotopes impact on the human body

Lies, damn lies, and radiation health, A Prosperous Way Down by Mary Logan Health impacts of unseen dangers 

env&radiation

Each isotope has different rates of biomagnification and then uptake and also different impacts in the body. Strontium follows calcium pathways in the body, so it settles in bone marrow, replacing structure and weakening bones and teeth, and causing leukemia.Cesium follows potassium pathways, lodging in muscle such as the heart. Many other isotopes act in other damaging ways in the body.

The dangers are probably still  small for most foods, but hazards are tenfold to a hundredfold for children, infants, and fetuses, who have the fastest rates of mitosis and development. Rapidly dividing cells in the young are most sensitive in any organism. Similarly, organs with rapidly dividing cells are affected (bone marrow, digestive tract, skin).  So risk avoidance is most important for the young.

Some of the list of long-term impacts for human health include the following:

 

  • Circulatory damage (high blood pressure, rhythm disturbances, MI, stroke, cardiomyopathies, rhythm disturbances artery spasm, especially during cardiac stress such as temperature extremes, physical/emotional stress) (Bandazhevsky, 2001)
  • Hematologic problems (leukemias especially)
  • Endocrine problems (especially Hypothyroidism, thyroid nodules/Cancer, and Diabetes)
  • Immune system
  • Uro-genital system
  • Musculoskeletal system
  • Dental problems as cesium replaces calcium in teeth and bones
  • Central nervous system and psyche
  • The eye (cataracts and retinopathies)
  • Increase in congenital malformations
  • Increase in cancers
  • Accelerated aging
  • Increased frequency of mutations
  • Fertility problems and Change in secondary sex ratio (Yablokov, 2012)
  • Because exposure to radiation is invisible and difficult to detect, it is far under-represented as risk factor for disease. Causes of mortality for radiation exposure are difficult to track beyond the obviously linked leukemias and cancer. Manmade radiation from above-ground testing beginning in the 1950s has been added to by military depleted uranium from expanding use in the Middle East and expanding failures in the 435 nuclear power plants (NPPs) around the world, along with the reprocessing plants. Radiation is often ignored as a reason for immunosuppression, various cancers, and perhaps even endocrine dysfunction, especially thyroid. Because radiation impacts have not been measured in the general population, radiation’s contribution to cancers and other diseases go unnoticed. Women are more vulnerable than men, and children are at least ten to perhaps hundreds of times as vulnerable as adults, because of the rapid mitosis of their cells as they grow. Fetuses are even more vulnerable…..http://prosperouswaydown.com/epistemology-radiation-health/

 

August 7, 2015 Posted by | radiation, Reference | Leave a comment

USA government makes rules on ionising radiation in water more lax

water-radiationFlag-USAEPA raises permissible levels of radiation in drinking water   https://thewrongblogg.wordpress.com/2015/08/04/epa-raises-permissible-levels-of-radiation-in-drinking-water/  The White House has given final approval for dramatically raising permissible radioactive levels in drinking water and soil following “radiological incidents,” such as nuclear power-plant accidents and dirty bombs. The final version, slated for Federal Register publication as soon as today, is a win for the nuclear industry which seeks what its proponents call a “new normal” for radiation exposure among the U.S population, according Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).

Issued by the Environmental Protection Agency, the radiation guides (called Protective Action Guides or PAGs) allow cleanup many times more lax than anything EPA has ever before accepted. These guides govern evacuations, shelter-in-place orders, food restrictions and other actions following a wide range of “radiological emergencies.” The Obama administration blocked a version of these PAGs from going into effect during its first days in office. The version given approval late last Friday is substantially similar to those proposed under Bush but duck some of the most controversial aspects: Continue reading →

August 7, 2015 Posted by | politics, radiation, USA, water | Leave a comment

Medical science’s blind spot about the causes of cancer, especially about ionising radiation

These days, our science is often directed by funding, and funding increasingly is directed by large corporations whose incentives are to increase profit. This research emphasis leads to a focus on tertiary treatment in high-tech healthcare centers, while blind spots develop about the causes of illness, especially environmental ones, including PCBs, heavy metals, radiation, and pesticides.

Lies, damn lies, and radiation health, A Prosperous Way Down by Mary Logan  2013,Recent news about Hanford leaks, a flurry of news surrounding the two-year anniversary of Fukushima, and today’s news about breast cancer rates in the US center my thoughts on blind spots in health research. I will use ionizing radiation again as an illustration of environmental linkages to disease, beginning with the trigger for this post, which was a new World Health Organization (WHO) report. Previous posts about nuclear hazards are linked here and here.

This week, the WHO published a preemptive report on Fukushima, only two years after the disaster. The WHO concluded that “for the general population inside and outside of Japan, the predicted risks are low and no observable increases in cancer rates above baseline rates are anticipated.” This conclusion is from the same organization that has been muzzled on the topic of ionizing radiation contamination of our environment since 1959, when they agreed to misinform the public in subordination to the global nuclear governing body, the IAEA, to protect civil and military nuclear interests.  If you believe that Fukushima has not increased background risk and there will be no increases in cancer rates, I have a bridge to sell you. Mark Twain’s maxim about lies, damn lies, and statistics can be applied here. The point of this post is to examine western medicine’s epistemology of disease, specifically examining how we select the risk factors that are involved in cancer and other diseases.

Epistemology is the study of the nature and scope of knowledge. Our society lacks a broad understanding of how ionizing radiation behaves once it is accidentally released into the environment. There are two main reasons for this. Bednarz (2010) describes Mitroff and Silvers’ discussion of Type 3 errors, where we unintentionally solve the wrong problems through our narrow worldview and reductionist focus in science, and Type 4 errors, where we intentionally solve the wrong problems, because we are pursuing goals such as profit that subverts the science. In our western system of medical research, we commit both Type 3 and Type 4 errors as a result of our narrow worldview and our economic mandate for profit and growth. These type 3 and 4 errors result in blind spots, especially regarding environmental linkages to disease.

In another medical report this week, a new epidemiological study of breast cancer reports increasing rates of breast cancer in young women (Johnson, Chien, & Bleyer, 2013). The pattern of increased incidence in younger patients would be compatible with the epidemiology of radiation-caused cancers, which are more common in the young who have faster cell division/turnover. The increased incidence could also be compatible with many other accumulating environmental toxins.

“The number of American women ages 25 to 39 diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer — which has already spread to other organs by the time it’s found — rose about 3.5% a year from 2000 to 2009, according to a study in today’s Journal of the American Medical Association. The trend began in the 1970s, although the most rapid increases occurred in about the last decade, the study says. The study doesn’t provide any clues about what might be driving the increase, says study author Rebecca Johnson, a pediatric and adolescent oncologist at Seattle Children’s Hospital. . . .

The number of women in this age range diagnosed with advanced disease rose from about 250 a year in 1976 to about 850 a year in 2009, Johnson says. The largest increases were in the youngest women, from ages 25 to 34, the study says. There were also slight increases in metastatic diagnoses among women ages 40 to 54, but no increase in older women” (USA Today, 2/27/13).

Western medicine’s emphasis on treatment and pharmaceuticals, with abandonment of science that is focused on prevention and risk factors in fields such as epidemiology, public health, and environmental medicine points to reductionist science and the influence of money in directing the focus of research. Recently, Dr. Susan Love said that  “. . . her experience [of a recent diagnosis of acute myelogenous leukemia] has emboldened her in her quest to focus on the causes of disease rather than new drugs to treat it.” This aha! moment from a well-known breast cancer researcher illustrates our blind focus on research oriented towards treatment with increasingly costly drugs that may not cure.These days, our science is often directed by funding, and funding increasingly is directed by large corporations whose incentives are to increase profit. This research emphasis leads to a focus on tertiary treatment in high-tech healthcare centers, while blind spots develop about the causes of illness, especially environmental ones, including PCBs, heavy metals, radiation, and pesticides. In Love’s case, her leukemia is even more likely to be attributable to radiation exposure than other diseases. Strontium-90 is a bone-seeker, playing havoc with bone marrow. Should we be focusing on and funding genetic testing and treatment as the future of medicine, or should we be widening our view to encompass better science about preventive care and attention to burgeoning environmental risk factors? Especially since the cost of healthcare in America is now at 18% of GDP, and rising without brakes.http://prosperouswaydown.com/epistemology-radiation-health/

August 7, 2015 Posted by | 2 WORLD, health, women | Leave a comment

Every year, thousands of Hiroshima survivors treated for radiation-induced illnesses

Hiroshima nuclear bomb 70th anniversary: New research shows thousands of survivors treated every year August 6, 2015  Reporter   

“…….New Red Cross data released on Thursday shows that even 70 years after the atomic blasts, Japanese hospitals treat thousands of survivors each year, mostly for cancer which has caused two-thirds of deaths. In the past 12 months, the Red Cross hospitals treated nearly 11,000 survivors.

The full impact of the blast on the survivors and their children who are now reaching 50 years of age, is still not fully known, Dr Masao Tomonaga, the director of the Japanese Red Cross Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Hospital and a survivor told Fairfax Media this week.

As well as suffering higher rates of cancer, new research by the Red Cross hospitals showed survivors who had lived close to the epicentres were also 1.5 times more likely to suffer from heart attacks and angina.

“I couldn’t imagine (these results) before we started this research some 65 years ago (when the hospitals were built.) This means atomic bomb radiation is a life-long effect, with evidence of a life-long susceptibility to cancers, leukaemia and heart attacks,” Dr Tomonaga said.

Of the 16,000 nuclear weapons held today, 1800 are launch ready and any one would make Little Boy or Fat Man “look tiny” and wipe out a city like Sydney, said Robert Tickner, the CEO of the Australian Red Cross. No country or medical service could handle the immediate or long-term impacts, including the millions who would go hungry, Red Cross research has found.

Mr Tickner is calling on Australians and their leaders to support a ban on nuclear weapons for humanitarian reasons.

The author Junko Morimoto drawing as a young girl near what became the Hiroshima Peace Memorial.Photo: Junko Morimoto

“If the world has moved on biological and chemical weapons as illegal weapons of war, if we have moved on clusters, landmines and had conventions to tackle those to deal with them as a weapon of war, what madness is it that we have not taken a similar stand on nuclear weapons.They are the standout greatest threat to the planet,” he said.

Around 113 countries have now signed the Austrian Pledge to prohibit and eliminate nuclear weapons because of their unacceptable humanitarian consequences. The federal government hasn’t signed, but the ALP ‘s new party platform, amended at last month’s conference, agrees to “prohibiting and eliminating nuclear weapons is a humanitarian imperative.”…..http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/hiroshima-nuclear-bomb-70th-anniversary-new-research-shows-thousands-of-survivors-treated-every-year-20150804-girqz8.html#ixzz3i4jl5UGt

August 7, 2015 Posted by | health, Japan | Leave a comment

The effects of radiation have haunted the lives of atomic bomb survivors.

The A-bombs fell / Specter of radiation lingers on  , Japan News, , August 04, 2015, August 04, 2015 The Yomiuri ShimbunThis is the second installment in a series. “……….When hibakusha (atomic bomb survivors) need treatment due to malignant tumors, leukemia, cardiac infarcts and other ailments, they may be officially recognized as having radiation sickness. This entitles them to a special monthly medical allowance of about ¥140,000, which is provided by the government apart from medical costs.

However, there are certain requirements for receiving the allowance, such as how far they were from Ground Zero when they were exposed. There were a total of 183,519 holders of special hibakusha health-care certificates for the bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki as of the end of March, but only 4.8 percent of them, or 8,749, were recognized as having radiation sickness………..

Poverty and discrimination

The effects of radiation have haunted the lives of atomic bomb survivors.

Hiroshima baby

“Just as I expected.” So thought a 72-year-old woman in Kure, Hiroshima Prefecture, when she was diagnosed with malignant lymphoma at a hospital nine years ago.

Her older brother and sister, both hibakusha, died from cancer after the war. The woman was the youngest of seven siblings, a boy and six girls. She experienced the bombing when she was 2 years old, in Ushita-Honmachi, now Higashi Ward, in the city of Hiroshima, about 2.5 kilometers from the blast center.

Looking for her brother and sisters, she entered the central area of the city while being carried by her mother for several days.

Her mother died eight months later, probably as a result of that exposure, while her father also died from a disease. The woman was adopted by another family, but three years later, her brother, who was also exposed to the Hiroshima bombing and had reached the age of 17, took her back……..

The woman was recognized as having radiation sickness in 2009. However, a neighbor told her, “You’re lucky to be a recipient” of the special monthly medical allowance. These words were very painful and in May this year, she refused to accept the money.

She wants people to know about her suffering but does not want them to know that she is hibakusha. This spring, a shadow was also found in her pancreas.

“My family was devastated, and I suffered from poverty and discrimination. My life is bound to the atomic bomb. I want to be freed from this,” she said in a trembling voice http://the-japan-news.com/news/article/0002331263

 

August 5, 2015 Posted by | history, Japan, radiation, social effects | Leave a comment

Radiation health study needed – call by New Zealand’s nuclear test veterans


Nuclear protesters call for radiation health study NZ Herald  Aug 3, 2015 Veterans of New Zealand’s frigate protest at nuclear tests in the South Pacific are calling for a study into the effects of radiation on their health and their children and grandchildren.

About 500 men served on HMNZS Otago and HMNZS Canterbury during the 1973 official Labour Government’s sea-borne challenge to testing in the atmosphere at a French Polynesian atoll.

Mururoa Nuclear Veterans Group president Wayne O’Donnell said the group wanted to monitor medical problems of the veterans and their families.

However, without a full list of those who served on the frigates, the group needed to get in touch with crew, or their widows and families.

The group aims to set up a trust fund to enable medical testing of veteran’s children and grandchildren.

It sought data on issues suffered by the children and also mothers during conception and child birth.

“It is hoped the results will establish the truth of the genetic transfer of illnesses related to the nuclear exposure encountered by the crews that were sent to Muruoa Atoll in 1973,” said Mr O’Donnell.

Since the group formed two years ago, he said it had met Veterans Affairs Minister Craig Foss and senior officials and more communication was expected from both sides……….http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11490895

August 5, 2015 Posted by | health, New Zealand, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Canada’s pro nuclear government keeps mum about the dangers of radioactive strontium 90

The government puts labels on cigarettes and warns of the danger to health. People have the right to know and the right to smoke cigarettes if they choose. People have the right to know what is in their milk and decide whether or not they want to drink it.

Could it be that the Canadian government’s involvement in the mining, processing and selling of uranium to other countries, its selling of nuclear technology to the world as well as its profiting from Canada’s own nuclear power plants and nuclear research reactors, makes it not want to draw attention to the dangers of radioactivity?

Canada’s Land of Milk and Strontium 90, Enviro reporter,  February 28, 2013 
diagram-Strontium-90We live on the Pacific Northwest coast of Canada. By many accounts, our area was particularly hard hit by the radioactive fallout that came directly over to us, in the jet stream, from the triple meltdown and hydrogen explosions at the nuclear power plant at Fukushima Daiichi, Japan, in March of 2011.

In Seattle, it was reported that the air was so contaminated after the accident that people were breathing in five “hot” radioactive particles a day!

The fallout was found to come down heavily in the rain that is so frequent in this rain forest we call home. Initially Simon Fraser University, in British Columbia, detected Iodine 131 in the rainwater on Burnaby Mountain They also found it in the seaweed on the shores of North Vancouver

Eventually we learned that the Air Monitoring Stations on Vancouver Island had picked up Radioactive Iodine 131 at levels 300 times higher than normal background.

A lab in Washington State found levels of radioactive xenon gas 40,000 times higher than normal levels.

So we knew the fallout had reached us. And we knew that there were at least 200 other radioactive substances that came along with the fallout from the nuclear plant accident. What we didn’t know was the level of contamination.

We learned that in California the tuna, milk, pistachios, naval oranges, prunes, wild mushrooms, strawberries, seaweed, beef, kale and spinach had been shown to be contaminated with radioactivity. However, having watched the jet stream patterns, we saw that our area in south western British Columbia was often missed by the atmospheric airflow from Japan.

After the initial study came out from Simon Fraser University, no more radioisotope studies were conducted by the researchers at that university So we set about trying to find out if anyone else was testing for radioactive fallout in Canada. Continue reading →

August 1, 2015 Posted by | Canada, radiation | Leave a comment

What Strontium 90 does to the body

diagram-Strontium-90Canada’s Land of Milk and Strontium 90, Enviro Reporter,  February 28, 2013“…….Strontium 90 never occurs naturally. It is man-made by the nuclear fission reaction. Strontium 90 is a “bone seeker.” It mimics calcium and if a bone is deficient in calcium, it will take up Strontium 90 in place of the calcium.

But whereas calcium will make your bones strong, Strontium 90 gets deposited in the bones and bone marrow and causes bone cancer and cancer of the tissues nearby. It can also get into the blood and cause leukemia.

Strontium 90 decays by practically pure beta radiation. When beta particles are ingested, they penetrate cells at the molecular level and are so strong that they can actually change the structure of the molecules they strike. If the molecule it strikes is a DNA molecule, then it can cause a spontaneous mutation.

Babies and pregnant women are the most sensitive to the effects of radiation. If a pregnant woman is drinking milk that has radioactive Strontium 90 in it, the fetus will concentrate that radioactivity. If a woman who is breastfeeding is drinking radioactive milk, the Strontium 90 will concentrate in her breast milk and thus get transferred to her baby.

Young children are the next most affected. Young girls are more affected than young boys. Women are more susceptible to the effects of radiation than men.

Strontium 90 has a half life of 28.79 years so it will be around for about 290 years before it completely decays away to a nonradioactive and risk-free form. That is, any Strontium 90 you ingest and lodges in your bones will remain in your body, decaying away, for your entire life.

There is no question about it – Strontium 90 is a man-made poison that we should never have to consume………http://www.enviroreporter.com/2013/02/canadas-land-of-milk-and-strontium-90/

August 1, 2015 Posted by | 2 WORLD, radiation | Leave a comment

Brain cancer risk increases with long term use of cell phone near one’s ear

Long-Term Exposure To Cell Phone Radiation Increases Risk Of Brain Cancer, New Study Says . Inqisitr 31 July 15 A new study appears to support long-held suspicions that prolonged use of cell phones, especially when placed against the ears, could increase the risk of cancer, specifically, certain types of brain cancer.

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 The new study titled, “Oxidative mechanisms of biological activity of low-intensity radiofrequency radiation (LIRF),” by Igor Yakymenko and colleagues at the Institute of Experimental Pathology, Oncology, and Radiobiology in Kiev, is a meta-study.

A meta-study is an analysis of hundreds of previous studies on the same subject using statistical methods than can reveal patterns across studies not revealed in single studies or smaller samples of studies.

Commenting on the results of the study in the light of previous studies that raised suspicions of a link between certain types of brain tumors and cell phone use, Yakymenko said, “These data are a clear sign of the real risks this kind of radiation (LIRF) poses for human health.”

The study concluded that damage caused by cell phone radiation to human DNA over long periods increases the risk of suffering not only headaches, fatigues and skin disorders, but also cancer.

According to the researchers, available data indicates that use of a cell phone for 20 minutes a day for up to five years increased the risk of certain types of brain tumor threefold. Using a cell phone for an hour a day for up to four years increased the risk of brain tumors three to five times……..

Although a recent large study found no clear evidence of link between cell phone use and cancer, a small group of heavy cell phone users showed a significanly higher incidence of brain tumors than the rest, suggesting, in concurrence with the new study, that heavy use of cell phones over a long period of time could increase cancer risk.

Despite figures showing that the overall incidence of brain cancers have not increased significantly since the introduction of cell phones, Yakymenko warned cell phone users to be wary of the possibility that data spanning longer periods — such as three decades – could show higher levels of risk.

“(Our) data were obtained on adults who used cell phones mostly up to 10 years as adults. The situation can dramatically differ for children who use cells phone in childhood, when their biology much more sensitive to hazardous factors, and will use it over the life.”

The researchers advised that the best way to minimize risk is by reducing the amount of time spent with your phone placed against your ears while making or receiving calls. In other words, people should use their phones handsfree and away from their ears more often. http://www.inquisitr.com/2298149/long-term-exposure-to-cell-phone-radiation-increases-risk-of-brain-cancer-new-study-says/#ce1txuT4TR3W1g1W.99

August 1, 2015 Posted by | 2 WORLD, health | Leave a comment

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