PETITION AGAINST THE INCREASE OF “ACCEPTABLE” RADIATION TO 2,000 millirem per year (20 mSv/y) FOR JAPANESE SCHOOL CHILDREN AND PLAY GROUNDS
Follow this link to sign the petition: http://blog.canpan.info/foejapan/daily/201104/24
The Japanese government is celebrating Children’s Day,
a national holiday on May 5th, by dramatically raising
radiation exposure limits in schools.
Robert Alvarez, April 29, 2011
Source: http://www.ips-dc.org/blog/japans_nuclear_catastrophe_leaves_little_to_celebrate_on_childrens_day
May 5 is Children’s Day, a Japanese national holiday that celebrates the
happiness of childhood. This year, it will fall under a dark, radioactive shadow.
Japanese children in the path of radioactive plumes from the crippled nuclear
reactors at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi power station are likely to suffer health
problems that a recent government action will only exacerbate.
On April 19, the Japanese government sharply ramped up its radiation
exposure limit to 2,000 millirem per year (20 mSv/y) for schools and
playgrounds in Fukushima prefecture. Japanese children are now permitted
to be exposed to an hourly dose rate 165 times above normal background
radiation and 133 times more than levels the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency allows for the American public.
Japanese school children will be allowed to be exposed to same level
recommended by the International Commission on Radiation Protection
for nuclear workers. Unlike workers, however, children won’t have a choice
as to whether they can be so exposed.
This decision callously puts thousands of children in harm’s way.
Experts consider children to be 10 to 20 times more vulnerable to contracting
cancer from exposure to ionizing radiation than adults. This is because as
they grow, their dividing cells are more easily damaged — allowing cancer
cells to form. Routine fetal X-rays have ceased worldwide for this reason.
Cancer remains a leading cause of death by disease for children in the
United States.
On April 12, the Japanese government announced that the nuclear crisis in
Fukushima was as severe as the 1986 Chernobyl accident. Within weeks of
the 9.0 earthquake and tsunami, the four ruined reactors at the Dai-Ichi power
station released enormous quantities of radiation into the atmosphere.
According to the Daily Youmiri, Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency
(NISA) announced that between 10 and 17 million curies (270,000- 360,000 TBq)
of radioactive materials were released to the atmosphere before early April,
a great deal more than previous official estimates.
Even though atmospheric releases blew mostly out to sea and appear to have
declined dramatically, NISA reports that Fukushima’s nuclear ruins are
discharging about 4,200 curies of iodine-131 and cesium-137 per day into the
air (154 TBq). This is nearly 320,000 times more radiation then the now
de-commissioned Connecticut Yankee nuclear power plant released over a year.
NISA’s estimate is likely to be the low end, given the numerous sources of
unmeasured and unfiltered leaks into the environment amidst the four wrecked
reactors. On April 27, Bloomberg News reported that radiation readings at the
Dai-Ichi nuclear power station have risen to the highest levels since the
earthquake.
With a half-life of 8.5 days, iodine-131 is rapidly absorbed in dairy products
and in the human thyroid, particularly those of children. Cesium-137 has a
half-life of 30 years and gives off potentially dangerous external radiation.
It concentrates in various foods and is absorbed throughout the human body.
Unlike iodine-131, which decays to a level considered safe after about three
months, cesium-137 can pose risks for several hundred years.
Measurements taken at 1,600 nursery schools, kindergartens, and middle
school playgrounds in early April indicate that children are regularly getting
high radiation doses. Radiation levels one meter above the ground indicate
that children at hundreds of schools received exposures 43- 200 times above
background. And this is outside of the “exclusionary zone” around the Dai-Ichi
reactors, where locals have been evacuated. Japan’s Ministry of Education
and Science has limited outdoor activities at 13 schools in the cities of
Fukushima, Date, and Koriyama Cities.
Although the extent of long-term contamination is not yet fully known, disturbing
evidence is emerging. Data collected 40 kilometers from the Fukushima’s
nuclear accident show cumulative levels as high as 9.5 rems (95 mSv)
– nearly five times the international annual occupational dose. Soil beyond the
30-kilometer evacuation zone shows cesium-137 levels at 2,200 kBq per
square meter — 67 percent greater than that requiring evacuation near
Chernobyl.
Three-fourths of the monitored schools in Fukushima had radioactivity levels
so high that human entry shouldn’t be allowed, even though students began
a new semester on April 5.
PETITION AGAINST THE INCREASE OF “ACCEPTABLE” RADIATION TO 2,000 millirem per year (20 mSv/y) FOR JAPANESE SCHOOL CHILDREN AND PLAY GROUNDS
Follow this link to sign the petition: http://blog.canpan.info/foejapan/daily/201104/24
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