{"id":10876,"date":"2011-10-16T09:47:52","date_gmt":"2011-10-16T00:47:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/go-naminori.com\/kirbyfukunaga\/?p=10876"},"modified":"2011-10-16T09:47:52","modified_gmt":"2011-10-16T00:47:52","slug":"094752","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/go-naminori.com\/kirbyfukunaga\/?p=10876","title":{"rendered":"Read this. Thanks Paul for sending it."},"content":{"rendered":"
\"15radiation2-articleLarge.jpg\"<\/a><\/div>\n

Citizens’ Testing Finds 20 Hot Spots Around Tokyo
\n From the New York Times:
\nTOKYO — Takeo Hayashida signed on with a citizens’ group to test for
\nradiation near his son’s baseball field in Tokyo after government
\nofficials told him they had no plans to check for fallout from the
\ndevastated Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. Like Japan’s central
\ngovernment, local officials said there was nothing to fear in the
\ncapital, 160 miles from the disaster zone.
\nThen came the test result: the level of radioactive cesium in a patch of
\ndirt just yards from where his 11-year-old son, Koshiro, played baseball
\nwas equal to those in some contaminated areas around Chernobyl.
\nThe patch of ground was one of more than 20 spots in and around the
\nnation’s capital that the citizens’ group, and the respected nuclear
\nresearch center they worked with, found were contaminated with
\npotentially harmful levels of radioactive cesium.
\nIt has been clear since the early days of the nuclear accident, the
\nworld’s second worst after Chernobyl, that that the vagaries of wind and
\nrain had scattered worrisome amounts of radioactive materials in
\nunexpected patterns far outside the evacuation zone 12 miles around the
\nstricken plant. But reports that substantial amounts of cesium had
\naccumulated as far away as Tokyo have raised new concerns about how far
\nthe contamination had spread, possibly settling in areas where the
\ngovernment has not even considered looking.
\nThe government’s failure to act quickly, a growing chorus of scientists
\nsay, may be exposing many more people than originally believed to
\npotentially harmful radiation. It is also part of a pattern: Japan’s
\nleaders have continually insisted that the fallout from Fukushima will
\nnot spread far, or pose a health threat to residents, or contaminate the
\nfood chain. And officials have repeatedly been proved wrong by
\nindependent experts and citizens’ groups that conduct testing on their own.
\n“Radioactive substances are entering people’s bodies from the air, from
\nthe food. It’s everywhere,” said Kiyoshi Toda, a radiation expert at
\nNagasaki University’s faculty of environmental studies and a medical
\ndoctor. “But the government doesn’t even try to inform the public how
\nmuch radiation they’re exposed to.”
\nThe reports of hot spots do not indicate how widespread contamination is
\nin the capital; more sampling would be needed to determine that. But
\nthey raise the prospect that people living near concentrated amounts of
\ncesium are being exposed to levels of radiation above accepted
\ninternational standards meant to protect people from cancer and other
\nillnesses.
\nJapanese nuclear experts and activists have begun agitating for more
\ncomprehensive testing in Tokyo and elsewhere, and a cleanup if
\nnecessary. Robert Alvarez, a nuclear expert and a former special
\nassistant to the United States secretary of energy, echoed those calls,
\nsaying the citizens’ groups’ measurements “raise major and unprecedented
\nconcerns about the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear disaster.”
\nThe government has not ignored citizens’ pleas entirely; it recently
\ncompleted aerial testing in eastern Japan, including Tokyo. But several
\nexperts and activists say the tests are unlikely to be sensitive enough
\nto be useful in finding micro hot spots such as those found by the
\ncitizens’ group.
\nKaoru Noguchi, head of Tokyo’s health and safety section, however,
\nargues that the testing already done is sufficient. Because Tokyo is so
\ndeveloped, she says, radioactive material was much more likely to have
\nfallen on concrete, then washed away. She also said exposure was likely
\nto be limited.
\n“Nobody stands in one spot all day,” she said. “And nobody eats dirt.”
\nTokyo residents knew soon after the March 11 accident, when a tsunami
\nknocked out the crucial cooling systems at the Fukushima plant, that
\nthey were being exposed to radioactive materials. Researchers detected a
\nspike in radiation levels on March 15. Then as rain drizzled down on the
\nevening of March 21, radioactive material again fell on the city.
\nIn the following week, however, radioactivity in the air and water
\ndropped rapidly. Most in the city put aside their jitters, some openly
\nscornful of those — mostly foreigners — who had fled Tokyo in the
\nearly days of the disaster.
\nBut not everyone was convinced. Some Tokyo residents bought dosimeters.
\nThe Tokyo citizens’ group, the Radiation Defense Project, which grew out
\nof a Facebook discussion page, decided to be more proactive. In
\nconsultation with the Yokohama-based Isotope Research Institute, members
\ncollected soil samples from near their own homes and submitted them for
\ntesting.
\nSome of the results were shocking: the sample that Mr. Hayashida
\ncollected under shrubs near his neighborhood baseball field in the
\nEdogawa ward measured nearly 138,000 becquerels per square meter of
\nradioactive cesium 137, which can damage cells and lead to an increased
\nrisk of cancer.
\nOf the 132 areas tested, 22 were above 37,000 becquerels per square
\nmeter, the level at which zones were considered contaminated at Chernobyl.
\nEdwin Lyman, a physicist at the Union of Concerned Scientists in
\nWashington, said most residents near Chernobyl were undoubtedly much
\nworse off, surrounded by widespread contamination rather than isolated
\nhot spots. But he said the 37,000 figure remained a good reference point
\nfor mandatory cleanup because regular exposure to such contamination
\ncould result in a dosage of more than one millisievert per year, the
\nmaximum recommended for the public by the International Commission on
\nRadiological Protection.
\nThe most contaminated spot in the Radiation Defense survey, near a
\nchurch, was well above the level of the 1.5 million becquerels per
\nsquare meter that required mandatory resettlement at Chernobyl. The
\nlevel is so much higher than other results in the study that it raises
\nthe possibility of testing error, but micro hot spots are not unheard of
\nafter nuclear disasters.
\nJapan’s relatively tame mainstream media, which is more likely to report
\non government pronouncements than grass-roots movements, mainly ignored
\nthe citizens’ group’s findings.
\n“Everybody just wants to believe that this is Fukushima’s problem,” said
\nKota Kinoshita, one of the group’s leaders and a former television
\njournalist. “But if the government is not serious about finding out, how
\ncan we trust them?”
\nHideo Yamazaki, an expert in environmental analysis at Kinki University
\nin western Japan, did his own survey of the city and said he, too,
\ndiscovered high levels in the area where the baseball field is located.
\n“These results are highly localized, so there is no cause for panic,” he
\nsaid. “Still, there are steps the government could be taking, like
\ndecontaminating the highest spots.”
\nSince then, there have been other suggestions that hot spots were more
\nwidespread than originally imagined.
\nLast month, a local government in a Tokyo ward found a pile of composted
\nleaves at a school that measured 849 becquerels per kilogram of cesium
\n137, over two times Japan’s legally permissible level for compost.
\nAnd on Wednesday, civilians who tested the roof of an apartment building
\nin the nearby city of Yokohama — farther from Fukushima than Tokyo —
\nfound high quantities of radioactive strontium. (There was also one
\nfalse alarm this week when sky-high readings were reported in the
\nSetagaya ward in Tokyo; the government later said they were probably
\ncaused by bottles of radium, once widely used to make paint.)
\nThe government’s own aerial testing showed that although almost all of
\nTokyo had relatively little contamination, two areas showed elevated
\nreadings. One was in a mountainous area at the western edge of the Tokyo
\nmetropolitan region, and the other was over three wards of the city —
\nincluding the one where the baseball field is situated.
\nThe metropolitan government said it had started preparations to begin
\nmonitoring food products from the nearby mountains, but acknowledged
\nthat food had been shipped from that area for months.
\nMr. Hayashida, who discovered the high level at the baseball field, said
\nthat he was not waiting any longer for government assurances. He moved
\nhis family to Okayama, about 370 miles to the southwest.
\n“Perhaps we could have stayed in Tokyo with no problems,” he said. “But
\nI choose a future with no radiation fears.”
\nMatthew L. Wald contributed reporting from Washington, and Kantaro
\nSuzuki from Tokyo.<\/p>\n

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Citizens’ Testing Finds 20 Hot Spots Around Tokyo From the New York Times: TOKYO — Takeo Hayashida signed on with a citizens’ group to test for radiation near his son’s baseball field in Tokyo after government officials told him they had no plans to check for fallout from the devastated Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. Like […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-10876","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-kirby-blogs"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/go-naminori.com\/kirbyfukunaga\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/go-naminori.com\/kirbyfukunaga\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/go-naminori.com\/kirbyfukunaga\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/go-naminori.com\/kirbyfukunaga\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/go-naminori.com\/kirbyfukunaga\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10876"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/go-naminori.com\/kirbyfukunaga\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10876\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/go-naminori.com\/kirbyfukunaga\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/go-naminori.com\/kirbyfukunaga\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/go-naminori.com\/kirbyfukunaga\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}