Two Years Later, the Battle for Truth Continues: Fukushima’s Nuclear Casualties

ASIA--PACIFIC, ENERGY, JUSTICE, ENVIRONMENT, 11 Mar 2013

Joseph J. Mangano - CounterPunch

Exactly two years after the Fukushima nuclear disaster, perhaps the most crucial issue to be addressed is how many people were harmed by radioactive emissions.

The full tally won’t be known for years, after many scientific studies. But some have rushed to judgment, proclaiming exposures were so small that there will be virtually no harm from Fukushima fallout.

This knee-jerk reaction after a meltdown is nothing new. Nearly 12 years after the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, there were no journal articles examining changes in local cancer rates. But 31 articles in publications like the Journal of Trauma and Stress and Psychosomatic Medicine had already explored psychological consequences.

Eventually, the first articles on cancer cases showed that in the five years after the accident, there was a whopping 64% increase in the cancer cases within 10 miles of Three Mile Island. But the writers, from Columbia University, concluded radiation could not account for this rise, suggesting stress be considered instead. While this was later contested by researchers from the University of North Carolina, many officials still subscribe to the slogan “nobody died at Three Mile Island.”

In 1986, after the Chernobyl catastrophe, officials in the Soviet Union and elsewhere raced to play damage control. The Soviet government admitted 31 rescue workers had died soon after absorbing huge radiation doses extinguishing the fire and trying to bury the red-hot reactor. For years, 31 was often cited as the “total” deaths from Chernobyl. Journal articles on disease and death rates near Chernobyl were slow and limited. The first articles were on rising numbers of local children with thyroid cancer – a very rare condition.

Finally, 20 years after the meltdown, a conference of the World Health Organization, International Atomic Energy Agency, and other groups admitted to 9,000 cancers worldwide from Chernobyl. But this was a tiny fraction of what others were finding. A 2009 New York Academy of Sciences book estimated 985,000 deaths (and rising) worldwide fromChernobyl fallout. The team, led by Alexey Yablokov, examined 5,000 articles and reports, most in Slavic language never before available to researchers.

Fukushima was next. While estimates of releases remain variable and inexact, nobody disputes that Fukushima was the worst or second-worst meltdown in history. But predictably, nuclear proponents raced to assure the public that little or no harm would ensue.

First to cover up and minimize damage was the Japanese government and nuclear industry. John Boice of Vanderbilt University went a step further, declaring “there is no opportunity to conduct epidemiologic studies that have any chance of detecting excess cancer risk. The doses are just too low.” At a public hearing in Alabama in December, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission official Victor McCree stated “there was no significant exposure to radiation from the accident at Fukushima Daiichi.” Just days ago, a World Health Organization report concluded there would be no measurable increase in cancer rates from Fukushima – other than a very slight rise in exposed children living closest to the site.

Others have made estimates of the eventual toll from Fukushima. Welsh physicist Christopher Busby projects 417,000 additional cancers just within 125 miles of the plant. American engineer Arnold Gundersen calculates that the meltdown will cause 1 million cancer deaths.

Internist-toxicologist Janette Sherman and I are determined to make public any data on changes in health, as quickly as possible. In the December 2011 International Journal of Health Services, we documented a “bump” in U.S. deaths in the 3-4 months after Fukushima, especially among infants – the same “bump” after Chernobyl. Our recent study in theOpen Journal of Pediatrics showed rising numbers of infants born with an under-active thyroid gland – which is highly sensitive to radiation – on the West Coast, where Fukushima fallout was greatest.

It is crucial that researchers don’t wait years before analyzing and presenting data, even though the amount of available information is still modest. To remain silent while allowing the “no harm” mantra to spread would repeat the experiences after Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, and allow perpetration of the myth that meltdowns are harmless. Researchers must be vigilant in pursuing an understanding of what Fukushima did to people – so that all-too-common meltdown will be a thing of the past.

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Joseph J. Mangano MPH MBA is Executive Director of the Radiation and Public Health Project.

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One Response to “Two Years Later, the Battle for Truth Continues: Fukushima’s Nuclear Casualties”

1. satoshi says:

   17 Mar 2013 at 09:53

   It seems that the Japanese government has been hiding the information, from the public, on radioactive contaminations relating to the Fukushima Daiichi since the occurrence of the accident two years ago. The government keeps Japanese citizens away from the crucial information on the radioactivity, on possible health problems and on other relevant key issues. It seems that the information on the so-called forbidden energy system – nuclear fission, using radioactive materials and producing radioactive wastes – is forbidden.

   Recently I read an informal report: The earthquake in March 2011 in the eastern part of Japan seriously damaged a factory, located outskirts of Tokyo, which stored radioactive wastes, then. The radioactive wastes began to leak into the air around that area after the earthquake. One of the cabinet members of the Japanese government and his family were living in that area, then. It seemed that he and his family obtained the information, from some source, on the leak of the radioactive wastes from that factory. They moved out of that area after the earthquake, without informing the neighbors of the leak of the radioactive wastes. According to the unconfirmed information, the radioactive contamination in that area is so gravely serious that it is inappropriate for people to live in that area. However, the government has not informed the local residents of the essential facts about the contamination and the possible health hazard at all so far.

   It is also reported from time to time even these days after two years of the earthquake, but not by the government but by some civil society organizations, that an extraordinarily high level of radioactivity has been discovered in the Japanese tea, produced more than 500 km (280 miles) away from Fukushima. Not to mention milk, vegetables, crops and other agricultural products, produced in the eastern part of Japan. Nevertheless, however, the government has been silent all about it since the earthquake.

   The headline of the above article reads, “Two years later, the Battle for the Truth Continues”. However, the fact of the matter is that the battle for the truth did not begin, then. Two years later, it has begun at last. Five years, ten years or twenty years from now, the truth will emerge more by itself together with the casualties, even if how the government will continue hiding the truth. In fact, that was how the truth of Chernobyl emerged even though how the Russian government continued hiding the truth.

   The above article points out, “[N]obody disputes that Fukushima was the worst or second-worst meltdown in history.” The Two Part of that incident is the worst or second-worst radioactive contamination in history. The Part One of that incident finished in a few days. But the Part Two will last decades, perhaps a century. Nobody knows until when. It has only just begun. The last two years were only a threshold of the long lasting Part Two.

   There is a plutonium mine in a mountain. The mine has been dug since a few decades ago by a contractor of the government. However, since the ancient times, the local people have strictly been told, “Do not dig this mountain. Do not touch the dug material. Do not use it. If you break these rules, you will suffer and die.”

   The price of the forbidden energy system is not only high but also its payment lasts for generations.