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China Detects 10 Cases of Radiation Contamination, 2 In Hospital

Posted by timothy on from the clickaclicka-click-click dept.

According to an article at The Sydney Morning Herald, "China has detected 10 cases of radioactive contamination among passengers, aircraft, ships and containers arriving from Japan since March 16, quarantine authorities said on Saturday. On Wednesday, radiation exceeding permitted levels was detected on two ships from the Japanese port of Chiba, near Tokyo, in the ports of Nantong and Zhangjiagang, Li Yuanping, spokesman of the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, said on its website." Meanwhile, airborne radiation from Japan is detectable in China, but thus far not considered a danger.

29 of 150 comments (clear)

  1. The next trend in air travel? by Scrameustache · · Score: 4, Funny

    Abnormally high radioactivity was first detected on a ship that arrived from Japan at the southeast port of Xiamen on March 22.

    Two Japanese travellers were briefly hospitalised the next day with elevated radiation levels after arriving in eastern China on a commercial airliner from Tokyo. Their clothing and luggage was destroyed.

    Not destroying your luggage: 60 dollars ($50 if paid at least 24 hours before check-in).

    --

    You can't take the sky from me...

    1. Re:The next trend in air travel? by NFN_NLN · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Abnormally high radioactivity was first detected on a ship that arrived from Japan at the southeast port of Xiamen on March 22.

      Two Japanese travellers were briefly hospitalised the next day with elevated radiation levels after arriving in eastern China on a commercial airliner from Tokyo. Their clothing and luggage was destroyed.

      How do you destroy radiation?

    2. Re:The next trend in air travel? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You do it like with radiation (uranium, thorium, etc.) in coal - you burn the stuff where radiation is and then you say you don't have radiation anymore since it went "up the chimney"! Problem solved!!

      Maybe the nuclear industry could take a hint from coal - just burn the radioactive waste on big pile! Problem solved! DUH!!

    3. Re:The next trend in air travel? by Hittman · · Score: 3, Insightful

      And then you ship it to the US.

    4. Re:The next trend in air travel? by maxume · · Score: 5, Funny

      Man, you punched that joke right in the face.

      --
      Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
    5. Re:The next trend in air travel? by Lord_of_the_nerf · · Score: 4, Funny

      How do you destroy radiation?

      Detention then disappearance?

      China already has processes to stop undesirable elements.

    6. Re:The next trend in air travel? by cyfer2000 · · Score: 5, Informative

      I think it is lost in translation or that Aussie news website is spreading FUD. The Chinese news I read has information like this

      1. 1, Two tourists, one 70 years old the other one is 77 years old, were found radioactive March 23. Both were from places far away from Fukushima Daiichi site.
      2. 2, The 77 years old showed strong but harmless radioactivity. The other one had less radioactivity.
      3. 3, Both were sent to hospital at March 23:15.
      4. 4, The 77 years old took a hot water shower in hospital.
      5. 5, The 70 years old did nothing but sleep.
      6. 6, Both left hospital at March 24 00:20am with their own clothes.
      7. 7, No mention about luggage.
      --
      There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
    7. Re:The next trend in air travel? by Kyusaku+Natsume · · Score: 2

      ROFL

      Sadly, they are not the only ones with such an advanced process. The USA has a research facility placed in Cuba, so in case things go wrong only muslims and communists will face the consequences.

      --
      Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!
    8. Re:The next trend in air travel? by cyfer2000 · · Score: 2

      The boat has returned to Tokyo port and very low level radioactivity was detected. It should be note that there may not be any correlation between the radiation on the boat and the damaged nuclear reactor.

      --
      There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
  2. from china ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    this being from China, we must assume this is a political maneuver, and that any truth behind it is incidental.

  3. PR perhaps? by cptdondo · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Given the long standing animosity between the Japanese and the Chinese, and the Chinese Gov't's total control of information, now much of this is true and how much is PR to smear Japan?

    My personal guess is that it has just enough truth in it to be irrefutable but little basis in actual fact. The chinese immigration goons could just have been told to grab 2 passengers at random and tell them they're contaminated and haul them off to the gulag^W hospital.

    1. Re:PR perhaps? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      There a wide margin between analysis and throwing shit at the wall to see what will stick...

      Guess on which side you are...

      How aboot 'unrelated considerations'. Yes Japan and China are not always in good terms. But China immediately send support and search teams after the quake/tsunami/nukesplosion.

      They are close to Japan. The plant is throwing up 24/7 for the last month or so.

      And when a neighbouring country detect radiation from ships or people coming from japan you decide it's a political move ? /yeah sure...

    2. Re:PR perhaps? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Add to this that it was first reported more than a week ago (25th March) and nothing more has been mentioned.

      Once again the media trawling for best scare stories for their readers.

      I stopped reading mainstream tabloid stories and instead tend to visit, World Nuclear News that seem to filter out the hysteria and present the known facts, including actual reading instead of meaningless 'x' times.

    3. Re:PR perhaps? by DMiax · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Given the long standing animosity between the Japanese and the Chinese, and the Chinese Gov't's total control of information, now much of this is true and how much is PR to smear Japan?

      It does not look even remotely true. The ship where they found "radiation" arrived in china on 22nd of March, which does not look enough for the contaminants to reach the ship. Moreover the stopped passengers are Japanese, and China has already an experience of stopping Japanese men for bogus reasons (some of them were taken as "spies" for retaliation in the Fisherman incident a few months ago).

    4. Re:PR perhaps? by DMiax · · Score: 3, Interesting

      If radioactive contaminant can get on a ship to China (btw the plant and the port are on the other side of Japan wrt china) no place in Japan is safe from it which probably means the end of the country altogether. Japanese and foreign authorities agree that radiation did not reach other cities in Japan. It may be false, of course, but it looks probable.

      And if you think that helping with the tsunami means they will not do something relatively innocuous like creating a PR stunt to smear Japan (remember: no lives are put in danger with this news) your understanding of international politics is poor at best.

    5. Re:PR perhaps? by Renraku · · Score: 4, Interesting

      You have to understand the scope of the situation. Most likely they had radiation detectors set to the most sensitive level. As in, they'll detect you if you ate a banana three days ago because of the isotopes present in the banana.

      --
      Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
    6. Re:PR perhaps? by MidnightBrewer · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I live in Japan and I can tell you that China did not immediately send support; they sent a handful of people after several days, and finally ramped things up when it became the media circus it is now and people started commenting that China wasn't really participating much.

      The Chinese government's radiation scare is just that; with the exception of Japanese TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company) workers, nobody's been allowed close enough to suffer any significant exposure. If they were exposed, then they voluntarily traveled inside the 20-km evacuation radius and it's their own damn fault. The cases of contamination were mostly due to radiation detected on ships, which was most likely on the ships' hulls themselves, picked up from trace amounts in the ocean.

      The Chinese themselves say it's trace amounts. However, they also don't usually use radiation detectors at the airport, either, and they don't disclose their definition of abnormally high levels.

      This is business as usual for relations between Japan and China. Google last year's scuffle when a Chinese trawler rammed a Japanese coast guard ship and see what you get.

      --
      "Give a man fire, and he'll be warm for a day; set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life
    7. Re:PR perhaps? by LordLimecat · · Score: 2

      According to http://www.mitnse.com/

      To date, radiation detected in milk is on the order of picocuries (10-12 Curie) per liter. This is 5,000 times lower than the FDA’s Derived Intervention Level. A Derived Intervention Level is the point at which the FDA would act to take the food in question out of our food supply.

      That doesnt seem like its anything worth being hospitalized over.

  4. They really don't like Japan huh? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    With the radiation level dropping lower and lower to 0.1-2 uSv/h, way below what you'd get from a single flight (40 uSv), this is just another case of the Chinese hating the Japanese. Maybe I'm not so used to the way "mainlanders" think anymore, having move from liberal Hong Kong to Europe years ago, but IMO it really is time to leave the past behind. Sadly, judging from the timing of broadcasting nationalistic WW2 documentary directly after the quake and now this, I guess it will take another generation at least.

    1. Re:They really don't like Japan huh? by lennier · · Score: 5, Insightful

      With the radiation level dropping lower and lower to 0.1-2 uSv/h

      I'm sorry, but - what?

      Which "radiation level" are you referring to? There's not one "the". There's the trace emissions in the jetstream worldwide, there's the iodine and cesium contamination locally within the evacuation zone (in one hotspot measuring higher than in the Chernobyl exclusion zone), there's the over 1Sv/hr extremely hot water (like, stand next to it for an hour and you get radiation sickness) in the drainage pit under the plant, there's the thousands times normal iodine contamination leaking into the seawater, with the potential to either make a lot of fish very sick or worse, bioaccumulate in fish tissue for decades to come. There's the "jumpers" being recruited to work onsite in multi-Sievert conditions where you get your lifetime's exposure in 15 mins...

      Somewhere in the world, yes, there is "a" radiation level associated with this Situation Normal All Fukushima'd which is still in the microSievert range. That does not mean everything everywhere associated with it is peachy keen and shiny.

      It's entirely possible, for instance, that the 20km zone might not be usable for farming for the next 300 years.

      --
      You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
    2. Re:They really don't like Japan huh? by compro01 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      there's the thousands times normal iodine contamination leaking into the seawater, with the potential to either make a lot of fish very sick or worse, bioaccumulate in fish tissue for decades to come.

      What exactly is going to bioaccumlate for decades? Iodine-131 has a half life of 8 days and decays into stable Xenon-131.

      --
      upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
    3. Re:They really don't like Japan huh? by AliasMarlowe · · Score: 3, Insightful

      What exactly is going to bioaccumlate for decades? Iodine-131 has a half life of 8 days and decays into stable Xenon-131.

      The question is whether or not they are detecting Iodine-129, which decays into Xenon-129, but has a half-life of 15.7 million years. I know nuke bombs and fission reactors create it, but haven't heard how much of this isotope has been found.

      Unlike I-131, I-129 IS a problem in the environment over the long term.

      On the other hand, to detect comparable rates of beta emission, you'd need about 700million times as much I-129 as I-131. The half-life determines not just the time scale of the emission process, but also its intensity per gram of material.

      --
      Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
    4. Re:They really don't like Japan huh? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Wow FUD much? about 2% of all boars shot have radiation levels too high to eat, and the level of radiation found is no where near the level linked to cancer.
      http://www.mb.com.ph/articles/312515/germanys-radioactive-boars-a-legacy-chernobyl

      You would have to eat 3 lbs of boar meat that is 10x the legal limit to get the same dose as just living one year longer.

    5. Re:They really don't like Japan huh? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      There are still wild boar in Germany??? On less panicky note:

      About 2 percent of the 50,000 boars hunted are above the legal radioactivity limit, Reddemann said. And the government's radiation protection office says some mushrooms have registered up to 20 times the legal cesium limit. .......
      European officials insist that occasionally eating contaminated boar meat or mushrooms does not pose an immediate health risk. Public health agencies are typically conservative in setting limits for radioactivity in food.

      Eating 200 grams of mushrooms tested seven times above the legal cesium limit, for example, would amount to the same exposure as the altitude radiation taken in during a 2,000-mile flight, according to Germany's Office for Radiation Protection.

      In Austria, authorities say that eating the unlikely amount of 2 pounds of contaminated boar meat that is 10 times above the legal cesium limit would amount to two-thirds of an adult's normal annual radiation intake by food.

      http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2014654517_apeugermanyradioactiveboars.html

      So, in reality, in Bavaria people panic lots it seems. You would have to eat boar meat every day for months and months to be affected by this. There ain't that many animals left in ALL of Germany! There is only a problem if you plan on actually farming certain crops in soils that received lots of cesium fallout.

      Anyway, here are some facts,
      http://www.epa.gov/radiation/radionuclides/cesium.html
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesium#Health_and_safety_hazards

      Radiocaesium does not accumulate in the body as effectively as many other fission products (such as radioiodine and radiostrontium). As with other alkali metals, radiocaesium washes out of the body relatively quickly in sweat and urine.

      So while Cesium is a problem and somewhat persistent, it is not as dangerous as Strontium-90. It acts kinda similar to Potassium in our bodies. And here's how Cesium decays,

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cs-137-decay.svg

      vs. Potassium-40 we have in our bodies (and no, not from bombs)

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Potassium-40-decay-scheme.svg

      So what does this mean???

      It means that Cesium is no more dangerous than Potassium-40 for most of us.

      Potassium-40 is the largest source of natural radioactivity in animals and people. An adult human body contains about 160 grams of potassium, of which a small fraction is potassium-40. From the isotope abundance and half-life it can be calculated that this produces about 300,000 disintegrations per minute continuously throughout the life of the body.

      Therefore we need to achieve 5,000 Bq dose of Cesium-137 in our bodies to get the same level of exposure to similar level radiation as from Potassium-40. So what is the limit in Germany? 600 Bq/kg for meat while 0.5Bq/kg is background. So, how much of the meat would you have to continuously eat per day to maintain at least 5000Bq in your body?? Not sure, but certainly more than recommended amount of meat in a healthy diet!! (maybe Bavarian "healthy diet" is all meat though)

      PS. Potassium-40 accounts for most of our radiation dosage. But that is only about 390uSv/year! Safe levels are 10mSv, meaning that safe levels of Cs-137 in your body seems to be closer to 125,000 Bq. Cancer limit is about 100mSv/yr, meaning 1,250,000 Bq Cs-137. So, 600 or 2000Bq/kg, I would certainly destroy that, but eat it. But then I don't eat that much meat to get me even within 1mSv, never mind 100.

      Anyway, this is just to put something in perspective. Cs-137 is not that great to have, but I would trade that for smog or coal any day. At least one can monitor how much Cs-137 is in your body - I can't monitor how much soot and microparticles of carcinogens I ingest/inhale/absorb thanks to fossil fuels.

  5. Slashdot should know better by RanBato · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Than to allow these type of false alarm / fear mongering articles on their main page. No actual numebrs mentioned in article 1. Article 2 makes it pretty clear there is no danger. Nothing to see here, please move on.

  6. Re:Long term health tracking by AHuxley · · Score: 4, Informative

    France, UK, US and Canada have the right idea - just dont track it. Any issues are in the distant past and shrouded in national security, nation building, export deals, patriotism and commercial secrets.
    If the press still keeps on digging, the patients privacy kicks in to stop any questions about epidemiology. Still having issues? Stop offering/teaching so much about epidemiology.
    Back to simple industrial toxicology, long term old people get sick... any detectors that spike are faulty and get removed for servicing for a few weeks.
    With no hard data its your expert vs nothing.
    If your still interested read and watch http://www.zerohedge.com/article/tellurium-129-presence-proof-inadvertent-recriticality-fukushima
    "Newly released TEPCO data provides evidence of periodic chain reaction at Fukushima Unit 1"
    http://vimeo.com/21881702
    The hard data is been released, the press is just not very good. http://cryptome.org/0003/fukushima-areva.zip
    http://www.zerohedge.com/article/attempt-pour-concrete-fukushima-pit-crack-generating-1-sieverthour-fails-new-unmanned-drone-

    --
    Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
  7. Detectable means nothing! by kombipom · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You can detect (and identify) the radiation from the atmospheric bomb testing that took place decades ago! Radiation detection equipment is extremely sensitive. Without numbers (and units) "detected" means absolutely nothing. Please /. stop reporting this non-news, it's just infuriating to anyone with even a basic understanding of radiation safety/physics.

  8. Typical Slashdot China-hating by compucomp2 · · Score: 2

    Par for the course, the Slashdot crowd hates on China irrationally, and it gets moderated up due to the ridiculous groupthink. What, you need another Soviet Union to blame everything on and which you can reflexively call evil everything that comes out of there? Aren't you still busy hating on the Arabs?

  9. Re:One banana, 2 banana, 3 banana - flawed? by Cyberax · · Score: 2

    Get a Geiger counter and a banana. Watch it start clicking like crazy.

    Bananas even sometimes trigger radioactive detectors in seaports.