Guest writer for Wake Up World
It has been well over a year since March 11, 2011 when a 9.0 magnitude earthquake rocked the east coast of Japan, leaving in its wake unfathomable consequences for the Japanese people and many unanswered questions in Japan and the rest of the world regarding the safety of nuclear energy. While the issue has had relatively little coverage as of late, the Fukushima Daiichi accident is considered the worst industrial accident in history and recent reports in the media warn that the situation is far from under control.
The staggering loss of over 15,000 lives and displacement of over 330,000 Japanese people because of the earthquake and tsunami, a series of nuclear meltdowns in reactors 1, 2, and 3, and radioactive re-leases at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, have plunged the country into radical changes, some of which may signify a turning point in embracing renewable energy technology and the phasing out of reliance on nuclear energy.
Originally assessed by Japanese officials as a level 4 incident on the International Nuclear Event Scale, successive assessments of the crisis one month later raised it to a 7, the maximum value, indicating an accident causing serious health and environmental effects and widespread contamination. A nuclear accident of this severity has occurred only once before in history with the Chernobyl disaster in 1986.
Media and scientific reporting on the health effects of radioactive releases from Fukushima since March 2011 have ranged anywhere from negligible to significant. A recent report by the World Health Organization indicates radiation levels in most of Japan are below those causing any increased risk of cancer and exposures in neighboring countries are less effective than an X-ray. But independent nuclear specialists, agencies, and physicians suggest the dangers are being vastly underestimated.
Arnie Gundersen of Fairewinds and Associates, an independent nuclear engineer and safety advisor to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Government Agencies in the US, Canada, and internationally, has been studying the situation in Fukushima and considers the two greatest health risks to be the effects of ingesting radioactive hot particles that continuously expose body cells to radiation over time and the massive release of radioactive particles (10x that of what was released in Chernobyl) into the Pacific Ocean where they bio-accumulate in the food chain and show up in seafood and migratory fish. Areas in Japan are now reporting substantial contamination of forests, plants, fresh-water fish, and other food crops. On March 25, 2012 Arnie Gundersen reported that all five of the soil samples he collected and analyzed from Tokyo would be considered toxic waste in the US. A study released by the National Academy of Sciences in the US confirms that radioactive cesium from Fukushima has recently been detected in Pacific Blue-fin tuna off the California coast.
Despite independent monitoring efforts and public concern, the Canadian and US federal governments are not monitoring radiation along the Pacific Coast and Gundersen says that an agreement was signed between the US State Department and the Japanese government to not monitor food imports for radioactivity from Japan. Gundersen suggests that if people are concerned, they should be actively lobbying their local government officials to monitor radiation and test seafood along the Pacific Coast. Numerous alternative health sites recommend eating radiation detoxifying foods such as un-radiated seaweed, miso, chlorella, bee pollen, and foods rich in pectin and supplements such as fulvic acid, vitamin C, and beta carotene to protect the body from Fukushima-related radiation.
Beyond the troubling effects of billions of Becquerel’s of airborne radiation still being released daily from the Fukushima site, which is relatively low compared to peak releases in the initial months following the meltdowns, as well as the continuous run-off of highly radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean from around the damaged reactors, many analysts feel the most pressing and immediate danger to Japan and potentially the entire Northern Hemisphere is the crisis at reactor 4.
