Children Near Japan Nuclear Plant Suffered Internal Radiation Exposure - Global Security Newswire

Radiation turned up inside nearly half of more than 1,000 young people tested in the vicinity of Japan's damaged Fukushima Daiichi atomic energy facility, the Asahi Shimbun reported on Thursday (see GSN, Aug. 18).

Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power has battled to prevent radioactive material from escaping the six-reactor facility following a March 11 earthquake and tsunami that left more than 20,000 people dead or missing in Japan. Forty-five percent of the tested individuals, who ranged from infants younger than 12 months old to subjects up to 15 years in age, tested positive for bodily radiation absorption in the aftermath of the disaster.

The thyroids in the majority of those affected had only received radiation in fairly small quantities, government representatives said on Thursday (Asahi Shimbun, Aug. 19).

"The possibility of these children developing thyroid cancer is extremely low" if the findings are reliable, Yoshio Hosoi, a specialist with Hiroshima University's Research Institute for Radiation Biology and Medicine, told the Wall Street Journal.

Still, the study took place too late to assess the potential absorption of contaminants that break down rapidly, such as iodine 132 and tellurium, he said (Yuka Hayashi, Wall Street Journal, Aug. 19).

Meanwhile, an official inquiry determined that Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency did not consider alerting foreign governments to plans for discharging low-level radioactive water from the plant into the Pacific Ocean, Kyodo News reported on Thursday. Japan's Foreign Ministry received notice of the effort from an official working with a Tokyo Electric Power crisis response panel (Kyodo News I/Mainichi Daily News, Aug. 18).

In a bid to lure former inhabitants back to the Fukushima prefecture city of Minamisoma, local leaders in the last week hired workers to rinse away potential contaminants in public areas, the Associated Press reported. More than one-third out of more than 30,000 people who have fled the area vacated properties still considered by the government to be safe for habitation.

City government members, who referred to August as "Decontamination Month," suggested failure to prove the area's safety could prevent the return of former residents. The city previously had a population of 70,000.

"We decided that we could not sit by and wait until Tokyo figured out what to do," local official Yoshiaki Yokota said. "It's an enormous task, but we have to start somewhere" (Eric Talmadge, Associated Press/Google News, Aug. 19).

Elsewhere, 52 becquerels per kilogram of radioactive cesium turned up in rice cultivated in the Ibaraki prefecture city of Hokota, prefecture officials said on Friday. The government allows nearly 10 times that concentration of contaminants, Kyodo reported (Kyodo News II/Mainichi Daily News, Aug. 18).

Tokyo loosened restrictions on beef shipments from Miyagi prefecture on Friday, but it maintained a prohibition on deliveries from Fukushima prefecture over concerns of radiation-tainted meat, Reuters reported (Ishiguro/Kubota, Reuters, Aug. 19).

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