Www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/TenHoeveEES12.pdf. Fukushima's disease risk: A major fallout? 17 July 2012Last updated at 12:51 ET Nakoso beach, 65km south of Fukushima Daiichi, opened for holidaymaking this week What claims to be (and indeed appears to be) the first formal attempt to calculate numbers of cancer cases and deaths resulting from the Fukushima nuclear accident has just been published.
The Energy and Environmental Science journal paper calculates that total deaths will lie in the range 15-1,300, while cases will number 24-2,500. These are deaths among the public, not among workers at the plant. The calculations were done by Prof Mark Jacobson and Dr John Ten Hoeve from Stanford University in California. One point they raise in the paper is that while these ranges may be big, even the minima are numbers above zero. This contradicts statements made since March 2010 that the world's worst nuclear accident after Chernobyl would be likely not to produce a single radiation-linked fatality among the public.
This kind of exercise is fiendishly difficult to do precisely. Why Fukushima death toll projections are based on junk science. The media is abuzz this morning with the first study attempting to quantify expected cancer deaths which may result from Fukushima. Written by Ten Hoeve and Mark Jacobson from Stanford University, the paper ‘Worldwide health effects of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident’ is published in the journal Energy and Environmental Science (free PDF copy). I will say upfront that I think the study is worse than useless. Jacobson (Hoeve is a former PhD student of his) is a long-time anti-nuclear and pro-renewables advocate, and (as I show below) clearly has an agenda to raise further fears about the health impacts of Fukushima and nuclear power in general. However, in this deeply flawed paper he succeeds only in illustrating some of the absurdities in current radiological protection models, and that one thing we know for sure – even if those absurdities are ignored – is that the evacuation killed more people than the accident.
And the next sentence is the key: Low-dose study finds no effects. Mice exposed to low-dose radiation for an extended period showed no signs of DNA damage, said a study from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) that challenges existing radiation guidelines. Living cells are constantly bombarded by ionizing radiation in various forms and from various sources. All this has the potential to damage DNA and unless this damage is corrected by self-repair mechanisms it can result in cell malfunction or the malignancy known as cancer. For most people the additional exposure from nuclear weapons detonation, nuclear power operations or nuclear accidents is a tiny fraction of the total, but this is not the case for everyone.
The MIT team said their study contributed to asking the question, "How much additional radiation is too much? " "Instead of being conservative, it makes more sense to look at a best estimate of how hazardous radiation really is. " Jacqueline Yanch, MIT One of the authors of the report was Jacquelyn Yanch. Japan's post-Fukushima earthquake health woes go beyond radiation effects. An article from Scientific American. After the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami crippled Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, worry about the unfolding nuclear accident quickly commandeered international headlines. Even after the situation was brought under relative control over subsequent days and weeks, public concern hung on the threat of radiation almost more than it did than on the tsunami and earthquake themselves, which had killed more than 15,850 people and displaced at least 340,000 more.
A year out, public health experts agree that the radiation fears were overblown. Compared with the effects of the radiation exposure from Fukushima, "the number of expected fatalities are never going to be that large," says Thomas McKone, of the University of California, Berkeley, School of Public Health. Yuriko Nakao / Reuters Volunteer workers clean inside ditches at an elementary school in Fukushima. Reacting over radiation Shaken place Experts on the ground in Japan agree.
Whos' Really to Blame for Fukushima Health Impacts? As is often the case, the passage of time yields clarity about events, and the nuclear power plant accident at Fukushima is no different. It has become clear that the misinformation and hysterics by anti-nuclear groups and individuals were mostly wrong. Their doomsday prophesizing actually worsened human suffering and environmental impacts by contributing to unwise decisions by political leaders in Japan and elsewhere to shut down nuclear plants.
In contrast, bloggers and experts from within the nuclear community accurately predicted outcomes and human health impacts. As was predicted on this blog and elsewhere, the multi-barrier reactor containment design protected the public. Despite preposterous claims by Greenpeace and others, there were no chunks of plutonium scattered across the countryside. As reported on Bloomberg and other news sources, no one in the public was harmed by radiation from the damaged reactors. Connect: Authored by: John Wheeler See complete profile.
The long and winding road for the Fukushima nuclear workers. Despite the Japanese Government's announcement of the cold shutdown of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in December, 2011, the clean-up operation in the wake of the nuclear crisis could take as many as 40 years. Hot spot areas where radiation exceeds 10 Sv per h are still untouched, and we cannot ignore the risk of accidental acute radiation syndrome. We previously proposed prophylactic autologous peripheral blood stem cell (PBSC) banking for the workers involved in the clean-up;1 no consensus has yet been reached. The policy-making process over the Fukushima nuclear accident is not straightforward because of delicate relationships between stakeholders. The Japanese Government has declared that prophylactic autologous PBSC banking is unnecessary. Since August, 2011, our team has attended medical check-ups for several hundred of the nuclear workers in Iwaki city, where many of the nuclear workers live.
We declare that we have no conflicts of interest. Loss of life after evacuation: lessons learned from the Fukushima accident. This is a report of the tragic events that befell hospital inpatients and elderly people in the emergency evacuation after the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident on March 11, 2011. Before the earthquake and tsunami that preceded the nuclear accident, there were eight hospitals and 17 nursing care facilities located within a 20 km radius of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. The estimated numbers of hospital inpatients and elderly people in nursing facilities at that time were about 1240 and 980, respectively. On March 11, the huge earthquake and tsunami severely damaged the number 1, 2, 3, and 4 reactors of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. The national government issued a State of Atomic Emergency in the evening of that day and evacuation was ordered for residents who lived within a 2 km radius of the plant.
The evacuation area was expanded to a 10 km radius the following morning. Evacuation continues late into the night. Individual Radiation Exposure Dose Due to Support Activities at Safe Shelters in Fukushima Prefecture. Abstract Immediately after the accidents in the nuclear power stations in Fukushima on March 11, the Japanese Government ordered the evacuation of the residents within a 20-km radius from the station on March 12, and asked various institutions to monitor the contamination levels of the residents. Hirosaki University, which is located 355 km north of Fukushima City, decided to send support staff to Fukushima. This report summarizes the results of the exposure of 13 individual teams from March 15 to June 20. The support teams surveyed more than 5,000 people during this period.
Almost all subjects had external contamination levels of less than 13 kcpm on Geiger-Müller (GM) survey meter, which is categorized as “no contamination level.” The 1st team showed the highest external exposure dose, but the 4th team onward showed no significant change. Editor: Xiaoping Pan, East Carolina University, United States of America Copyright: © 2011 Monzen et al. Introduction Results and Discussion. The low-level nuclear threat : Nature. Fear of the effects of an atomic strike haunted the politicians and scientists of the cold war. For years, researchers around the world worked on massive and systematic programmes to understand how ionizing radiation might affect survivors of a blast. Almost half a billion animals in the United States, the Soviet Union, Europe and Japan — mostly rats and mice, but also thousands of dogs and some rabbits and monkeys — were deliberately irradiated.
These experiments were well designed and worked to identify the pathological consequences of doses of various types of radiation, delivered at different rates and by different routes, including inhalation or ingestion. Results were documented in detail and tissue samples were kept. The political thaw of 1989 changed priorities, and these experiments and their results were largely forgotten. Science hasn't yet provided all the answers that governments need to respond to these concerns. Responding to the radiation threat. The New York Times recently reported that in the darkest moments of the triple meltdown last year of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, Japanese officials considered the evacuation of the nearly 36 million residents of the Tokyo metropolitan area. The consideration of so drastic an action reflects the harsh fact that in the aftermath of a major radiation exposure event, such as a nuclear reactor accident or a "dirty bomb" terrorist attack, treatments for mass contamination are antiquated and very limited.
The only chemical agent now available for decontamination -- a compound known as DTPA -- is a Cold War relic that must be administered intravenously and only partially removes some of the deadly actinides -- the radioactive chemical elements spanning from actinium to lawrencium on the periodic table -- that pose the greatest health threats. Scientists at the U.S.
Q&A: Health effects of radiation exposure. 21 July 2011Last updated at 07:47 By Richard Warry BBC News Prof Malcolm Sperrin, a medical physicist, on the Japan quake health risks Concern remains over the potential effect on human health from radiation leaks at the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. A 20km (12 mile) evacuation zone affecting about 70,000 people has been imposed around the plant, and is being extended to five communities outside the zone to the north west of the plant, where radioactive contamination is most significant. Residents living within 30km (18 miles) have been advised to leave the area, or to stay indoors, and try to make their homes airtight. Experts believe that swift action of this sort should have minimised the risk to human health, but there are worries about the level of radiation to which emergency workers have been exposed, and about possible contamination of food and water supplies.
What are the immediate health effects of exposure to radiation? How is radiation sickness treated? Yes. What is the health risk? Radioactive subs health impact. Source: reuters // Reuters March 24 (Reuters) - Countries around the world have either banned or stepped up tests on imports from quake-stricken Japan after radioactive substances were found in its food and water following blasts at a nuclear plant.
Exposure to large amounts of radioactivity can cause nausea, vomiting, hair loss, diarrhoea, haemorrhage, destruction of intestinal lining, central nervous system damage and death. It also causes DNA damage and raises the risk of cancer, particularly in young children and fetuses. Below are the three radioactive substances health experts are most concerned about, their detected levels in Japan and what they mean for human health: Iodine-131 Leafy green vegetables in Japan were found this week to contain up to 22,000 becquerels of iodine-131 for every kilogram.
Such a level exceeds the limit set by the European Union by 11 times. Exposure to 100 millisieverts a year increases the risk of cancer. Caesium-134 and Caesium-137 * 700: vomiting. How much radiation is dangerous? Japan radiation levels visualised. With thanks to Gemma Hobson and her ongoing efforts at data entry, we've now extended the duration of the visualisation to cover a full four days. From 17:00 on the 16th of March through till 16:00 on the 20th of March. It can be seen that radiation levels near Fukushima are somewhat higher than the original visualisations, whilst the previous data showed peak around 0.15 µSv/h, measurements are now peaking at 0.25 µSv/h. The typical minimum and maximum values across Japan are plotted below on the same scale for comparison. Additionally, the map embedded below again shows the environmental radioactivity measurements with respect to the typical maximum values for that locale. This shows that enhancement around Fukushima is now spiking around four times typical maximums, the previous visualisations showed enhancements of only around twice typical maximums.
Update: I've just been pointed to this interesting visualisation of the original magnitude 9 earthquake in Japan. Are You Getting More Radiation than Tokyo? It Depends : Dean's Corner. This article was co-authored with Dr. Rama Hoetzlein, Assistant Professor, Department of Architecture and Media Technology at the Aalborg University at Copenhagen. Dr. Hoetzlein prepared the graphic. With increasing concern about radiation exposure in Japan and beyond, you might wonder: How much radiation am I getting?
Note that Dr. This visualization shows a map of low level ionizing radiation levels received from various sources throughout the year for the average person, along with a time series plot of measured levels in Tokyo from March 15th to March 21st following the Fukushima accident [1]. Reports by the Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board [9] indicate that the average person accumulates 6.2 mSv/year from cosmic radiation (13%), radon (42%), terrestrial background (16%) and from medical radiation (10%). The idea of going “over your limit” is also suspect since there is no such limit. Source material: [1] Tokyo levels: Tokyo radiation levels – daily updates. EDF_rayonnements_sante.pdf.
Radiation risks: who says what. The US is recommending a no-go zone of 80 kilometres - four times the size of the 20-kilometre exclusion zone set up by Japanese authorities around Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. See your ad here Jacques Repussard, head of France's Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN), said a radioactive plume would extend from "several dozen kilometres" around the plant to several hundred kilometres "in the coming days". But he said the plume would have no consequences for health in Tokyo, 250 kilometres to the south-east. Britain's Chief Scientific Officer, Professor John Beddington, told the British embassy in Tokyo that even in the worst-case scenario, an explosion following a meltdown would only be serious for the local area.
During the meltdown, the nuclear material would fall to the bottom of the containment structure and react with the concrete and other materials. "In this reasonable worst case you get an explosion. "As things stand, this cannot be ruled out. " 17-3 Oz experts ‘dismiss’ radioactive fallout fear. Health risks of exposure to radiation. Risk expert: Why radiation fears are often exaggerated - opinion - 24 March 2011. How nuclear accidents damage health. How Far from JPN - Fallout Pose a Health Risk. How Radiation Threatens Health. Causation not so easy to pin on radiation. Track health effects of nuclear crisis. Radiation risks unknown. Tap Water Ban near Fukushima. Water limits for radioactivity IAEA (PDF) WHO water sanitation levels (PDF) Bureau Waterworks TYO (JPN) 東京都水道局. Environmental radiation TYO. Researchers Trumpet Another Flawed Fukushima Death Study.