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Fukushima's Fallout of Fear
gbrumfiel writes "Experts believe that the many thousands who fled from the Fukushima nuclear disaster received very low doses of radiation. But that doesn't mean there won't be health consequences. Nature magazine traveled to Fukushima prefecture and found evidence of an enormous mental strain from the accident. Levels of anxiety and PTSD-like symptoms are high among evacuees. Researchers fear that, in the long run, the mental problems could lead to depression and substance abuse among those who lost their homes. In other words, even if no one develops cancer as a direct result of radiation, the health effects could still be very real."
If officials would reliably issue accurate statements there would be much less reason to stress out.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
.. Are they saying that fear mongering will kill more people than the radiation from actual nuclear disaster? Wow.
So that means, on the death toll scale:
1. The actual Tsunami
2. Traffic accidents from people trying to flee
3. Stress related deaths
4. Radiation related deaths
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
Because people have been told "You must freak out! Think of the health risks!", and promptly did freak out... they are now likely to have negative impacts on their health because they freaked out.
Got it.
According to the BBC Horizon episode "Nuclear Nightmares" only around 50 something peoples death can be directly linked to radiation. I'm sure the psychological damage at Chernobyl was way worse than in Fukushima! The documentary stated that ~200,000 abortions took place as a consequence; How bout them apples! (Oh and the piece starts out with a woman and her daughter, who is healthy and was suppose to be aborted, exploring the remnants of Chernobyl)
As opposed to the people merely flooded out by the tsunami, who are apparently just peachy keen.
Or nobody gives a damn.
Experts believe that the many thousands who fled from the Fukushima nuclear disaster received very low doses of radiation. But that doesn't mean there won't be health consequences.
Yeah I think having your friends, family, and coworkers drown might stress them a wee bit, even if americans think nothing happened there but a minor nuclear power incident.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
I don't think there is a low dose minimum. Sure we have background radiation. So this plus whatever folks received from the leakage from the Fukushima plants is considered low? What BS. Just because the effects might not be seen for 10 or 20 years doesn't mean there aren't any. Of course you can't prove a negative and trying to prove an effect that happens decades later is nearly impossible. Oh wait, we can do an experiment. Lets take a bunch of identical twins, expose one to so-called low level of radiation and the other to no radiation, keep them in an insulated box for several decades and see if the one exposed to the radiation gets sick. Oh you say we can't do that experiment? Of course. But looking at the basic physics and the effects of radioactive molecules on nearby cells, we can with a certain amount of certainty say that radiation in any amount will have not so good effects on the human body. Look up some of Helen Caldicott's work.
"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!" -- Dr. Strangelove
Losing your home, let alone all your possessions, is a horrific thing to go through, no matter what the process of loss is: nuclear accident, hurricane, bankruptcy. I believe it is a more devastating loss than the one you have when you reach a certain age and the truth of your own mortality comes into full focus. Losing everything the day your own light goes out forever, there is a sense of loss in the anticipation, but there is no "you" to miss anything afterwards. Losing all your "stuff" on the other hand is the hurt that just keeps hurting.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2013/01/11/like-weve-been-saying-radiation-is-not-a-big-deal/
"A very big report came out last month with very little fanfare. It concluded what we in nuclear science have been saying for decades – radiation doses less than about 10 rem (0.1 Sv) are no big deal. The linear no-threshold dose hypothesis (LNT) does not apply to doses less than 10 rem (0.1 Sv), which is the region encompassing background levels around the world, and is the region of most importance to nuclear energy, most medical procedures and most areas affected by accidents like Fukushima."
Effects not of nuclear power, but of panicky "abundance of caution" overreactions by authorities and news media to _any_ perceived threat.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
FFS enough with the nuclear-accidents-are-cool-and-safe propaganda on slashdot.
On the one hand we are expected to believe there are nuclear terrorists with a few grams of cesium-137 pose a deadly threat to our largest cities
On the other hand we are expected to believe a nuclear accident where 180TONS of nuclear fuel in three reactors completely melted down, releasing over 5-30kg (15-85TBq) of cesium-137 directly into the atmosphere, 10 times as much other volatile isotopes, (in addition to even greater ongoing releases into the ocean) will have no significant health effects at a population level.
Read the works of the late Alice Stewart at Oxford University or Ernest Sternglass. All the other pro-nuclear academics are corrupted gits.
It may well be that the physical health effects of the plant problems were only 0.1% of those of the wave. Yet what is it that people choose remember? Our fears cause us to continue to chronically delay replacement of fossil fuels with nuclear. Fossil fuel air pollution kills 2,000,000 people every year. The impending climate crisis could cause a fatality rate 100 times higher than that.
Quite possible. But keep in mind that it is easy to detect extremely small quantities of radioactive material. In all likelihood, they detected an increase from 10 atoms per cubic meter to 15 atoms per cubic meter. True, that's a 50% increase. But we're talking about such a incomprehensibly miniscule quantity as to be totally irrelevant.
is there some sort of accident that could reverse this depression? like perhaps an explosion at a giant nitrous oxide factory?
how many pairs of boxer shorts should you own?
http://xkcd.com/radiation/
Their they're doing there hair.
It seems to me that one explanation that many thousands received a low doses of radiation is BECAUSE they fled, not in spite of it which is what the summary seems to imply. And being told there is nothing to see here while a nuclear plant is actually going through a meltdown, then suddely told you must evacuate, well that seems like a category for stress. It's not like they could see if they are in danger or not, and they have no way of measuring how much danger they face (from possible exposure), so yeah, that's going to screw with your head.
In many parts of the evacuated zone, the "contamination" is so small and insignificant that health experts have stated that people could safely return home. However, the government of Japan, instead of trying to educate people about the true risks (or lack thereof) decided they were going to keep the area empty until it could all be "cleaned up" at enormous expense.
So, the public is left with the impression that the government must know it's too dangerous to return, so it must be, right? So, they are depressed that a nuclear accident evicted them from their family home (which may have belonged to the family for generations - in Japan, a home staying in the family for very long periods of time is not uncommon) and they won't be able to return in their lifetime.
The government should just let people return to the very low contamination areas, which ARE SAFE for human habitation, educate them about the risks, and let them get on with their lives.
Seriously? You're going to start blaming Nuclear power for depression? REALLY? Sorry, but as if the anti-nuclear groups weren't already ridiculous, I think they've finally gone full retard.
The article comes close to saying the evacuation was a mistake. It looks like far more deaths and suffering will come from the evacuation that the low doses of radiation.
Given that, I wonder how the total financial meltdown courtesy of Golden Sacks and co. complete with people losing their homes, income, and healthcare compares to every reactor in the U.S. suffering a Fukushima style meltdown all at once.
Japan bluefin tuna fetches record $1.7 million
Bluefin tuna record Fukushima radioactivity
.
I quote from the second article:
From the IEEE spectrum's article Chernobyl's Stressful After-Effects
Also see the book Toxic Turmoil (one review here)for more discussion of the role of stress in disasters.
We should note the Chernobyl's radiation release was an order of magnitude greater than Fukashima's .
People lost their homes, loved ones, possessions and jobs. Why anyone would think the power plant issue/evacuation is the main source of their depression is beyond comprehension.
We do have some idea of low-dose radiation effect based on empirical study. One of the best sources is the BEIR series (BEIR VII). The problem is even at medium levels of exposure, such as first-gen radiation workers and various accidents in the nuclear industry, the background cancer incidence rate is very noisy, and the statistical error bars are enormous for the data we have, even with studies involing tens of thousands of people, and estimates range more than +/-(100%) in the 90% confidence interval.
The best data we have is for leukemia - and that is only because radiation (background and otherwise) seems to account for roughly 50% of cases, much, much more than for other cancers (10% usually).
Here's a summary of what we know and don't know:
1) For low level radiation (100 mSv), it is very plausible that radiation exposure contributes to cancer, but we have not been able to measure an significant difference from 0.
2) There is a good 13 country large scale study that does show significance from zero, but only by using Canadian Chalk River data from the late 1950's/early 1960's, which skews the entire result. Chalk River gew out of Canada's 'Manhattan project' for nuclear power and nuclear medicine, and was very secretive in these years, and has a couple of major meltdowns prior to this data being collected - so it is thought that doses are under-reported. The results from this study can probably be taken as an upper bound - and state essentially that you can multiply your cancer risk by one plus your dose in Sieverts to get an estimate for cancer risk after exposure and your risk of early death by ~(1 + .40*(dose in Sv)), where a factor of 1 means no change.
3) Therefore, as 1 Sv is an upper estimate on your dose if you were to move to the boundary of the Fukushima-Daiichi plant today and live the rest of your life there, the effect of this on your health is likely less than a lifetime of smoking (which increases risk of early death by ~40%). I would advise neither.
4) Using data from Chernobyl and lifespan data analysis on those impacted, as well as various other studies, the best estimate for increased of cancer risk is about (1 + 0.30*(dose in Sv)). If this dose is accumulated over time (like exposure to a power-plant accident), it is common to assume the impact can be divided by either 1.5 or 2 (and in any rate between 1 and 3). It has long been thought and supported by evidence that this should be taken as an upper bound for low doses. In all studies done so far, this risk factor is almost certainly below 2, and almost certainly above 0. At low levels and over long periods, whether the risk factor is 0.01, 0.1, or 0.3, or even 1.0, or how linear or nonlinear the risk is, is anyone's guess. As such, living on the doorstep of Fukushima's plant for the remainder of your life is probably not quite as bad for you as living near a major highway or a major street in an industrial city (~10%-20% increase in early mortality). Still: bad idea, especially as these risks multiply together. If the area near the plant had not been evacuated, there would have been a very noticible Leukemia crisis there over the next half century.
5) Some studies show a negative impact of radiation on cancer at low doses, but this is always within error of being either 0 or even as high as the 13 country study. Not just small studies show this: in the second largest meta-study done on low-level radiation, the best estimate for non-leukemia cancers was negative.
6) Leukemia effects are better understood. It does not seem to follow a linear model, but if it did its effects are roughly a factor of 2 per Sievert. That is, if you are exposed to a one time dose of 1 Sv, your risk of developing Leukemia would triple.
7) There is one industry where high lifetime doses are considered an occupational norm: space travel. Many astronauts expect to received upwards of a 1 Sv (and beyond) lifetime dose, and a single ISS visit could land you with a dose simila
They stated that it was damaged but unbroken.
Then damaged but not leaking.
Then leaking but not melting down.
Then only one meltdown.
Then two, but no fallout was leaking out of the containment pool.
Then it was.
"I run screaming from a TV when I see just the Fox logo."
I wish some of my coworkers were like that. Just hold up an LCD screen with that on it and they leave immediately.
Kind of like a glyph or warding.
No cancer.
Must be safe.
Leukemia effects are better understood. It does not seem to follow a linear model, but if it did its effects are roughly a factor of 2 per Sievert. That is, if you are exposed to a one time dose of 1 Sv, your risk of developing Leukemia would triple.
Can you explain this maths for those of us who didn't learn in college that 2=3?
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
First, there is not enough information about long term low level radiation exposure to know the long term risks. The one other similar example, Chernobyl, is not a good case study. Critical information was (and perhaps still is) being withheld by the authorities. Meaningful exposure profiles are not available. In addition, the population exposed has been so negatively effected by the fall of the Soviet Union that it is difficult to determine what is caused by radiation and what is caused deteriorating environmental conditions. Having a dysfunctional health care system makes it even worse.
Second, there are more potential negative health effects then just cancer. There is some indication that increased radiation exposure leads to higher levels of cardiovascular disease. There are many potential unknown health problems
The radiation is not a uniform low level background. It is characterized by "hot spots" that are significantly more dangerous. Water caries hot material into places like roadside ditches, which is why Chernobyl visitors are told to stay on hard road surfaces and not walk off the road. This is really a problem for children, since that is the kind of thing they are prone to do. Ingesting the higher radiation material would be particularly hazardous for them.
Stress causes negative health effects. For example, being laid off with long term unemployment causes increased illness. Many peoples lives have been profoundly changed for the worse, including dislocation and job loss. This is only made worse by the radiation problem, which adds a huge amount of uncertainty.
The government and the nuclear industry has been lying to the Japanese public for decades about the risks associated with nuclear power plants. They have no credibility, so when they say that the situation is under control no one believes them. More stress.
Compensation for victims has been extremely inadequate and plagued by bureaucratic delay. Tepco is effectively bankrupt, so they and the government have strong incentives to spend as little money as possible. Also paying compensation highlights their failure, which means loosing face. This is not solely a problem in Japan; just look at the British Petroleum lying advertisements minimizing the environmental impact of the Macondo well disaster.
Speaking of bankruptcy, the nationwide economic impact of the tsunami would be bad enough, but the added burden of the Fukushima disaster makes a horrible situation even worse.
Finally, the disaster isn't over yet, it's ongoing. The damaged reactor units are not really secured. Because of the high radiation levels the most dangerous parts of the facilities have not been inspected so the amount of damage is unknown. The next earthquake could unleash radiation orders of magnitude worse that what already happened. The cores require ongoing cooling, and the equipment involved keeps having outages. An earthquake could lead to cooling loss and a full meltdown with atmospheric release of extremely radioactive core material. The spent fuel pools are also vulnerable to this kind of failure, and they are in damaged containment buildings, not reactor vessels. This is another reason for keeping residents away from the site. Safe evacuation might even not be possible in this situation.
Radiation levels in the ocean near the plant has not declined as much as expected. This is almost certainly due to continuing leakage of radioactive water from inside the damaged units.
So the negative health situation of Fukushima victims is caused by real world problems that induce stress and anxiety. Dismissing these issues is both factually wrong and ethically revolting. As is often the case, Slashdot participants are on the wrong side because they exhibit willing blindness to serious problems associated with real world technology.
Why is Snark Required?
They are the only country in the world to have nuclear weapons used against them. It only stands to reason they would freak out about radiation.
But you know that's just the obvious answer. Really, they are waiting for Godzilla to show up and level Tokyo.
who prays for Satan? Who in 18 centuries has had the humanity to pray for the 1 sinner that needed it most? ~Mark Twain
In other words, even if no one develops cancer as a direct result of radiation, the health effects could still be very real
ACTUALLY the article is arguing that the health-effects could be all in peoples mind.
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
I was in Japan shortly after the Tsunami, and most people seemed to understand that the radiation would have no impact on their lives for anyone in Tokyo or south of Tokyo, compared to the mild panic say on the west coast of North America. The authorities seemed to have communicated somewhat effectively the risks, at least for those not in the immediate area, and people were far more focused on getting support to tsunami victims than concerned about radiation. As such, the damage due to panic was relatively localized.
I'd hate to see something similar happen in the US - with the culture of fear, panic, and entitlement, people would go nuts and the damage across the entire country could well be hundreds of times larger than any radiation release could cause. This is why the prospect of a dirty bomb is such a scary terrorist scenario - it wouldn't cause much damage itself but people would tear each other apart, avoid anyone exposed due to fear, and permanantly cordon off a large section of urban landscape. Even though if this were to happen it is likely to be home grown, the army will likely go to war with the first country that blinks, and politics will get even more insane. Scary stuff - though completely preventable and self-imposed.
Step 1: Run like headless chickens promising a fiery death through radiation burns to anyone living within 1000 miles of Fukushima.
Step 2: Be somewhere else when scientific findings pour in, showing that the risk on the general population, save for some very specific cases (such as workers at the plant who heroically risked their health trying to fix things), pales by comparison with absolutely every other aspect of the catastrophe (starting with thousands of deaths, injuries and destroyed houses, for entirely non-nuclear reasons).
Step 3: Announce yourself vindicated when Step 1 results in a rash of PTSDs and other mental health issues.
This is because the factor is a relative risk factor. That means you take your risk and multiply by (1 + factor). This is done because risk factors for cancer seem to stack and you don't have zero chance of cancer just because you have 0 exposure to one of the risks.
Substance abuse? They surely don't know Japanese people. It's not USA.
You can actually say that the radiation has caused significantly less damage than the people who kept saying how dangerous the radiation is!
I was about to post something similar, seeing noone seemed to notice the inconsistency...
It's somewhat like claiming to fear fire or to flee from fire was stupid because those who fled weren't burnt much after all...
Well the science actually differs from the article. Here is a list of some scientific studies on the effects of low energy emitters, particularly Triated water, with references, in case there is any doubt regarding low dose radiation's effect on living beings.
Tritium is biologically mutagenic *because* it's a low energy emitter. This characteristic makes readily absorbed by surrounding cells. The available evidence from studies conducted journal a list of effects. From those works;
Tritium can be inhaled, ingested, or absorbed through skin. Eating food containing 3H can be even more damaging than drinking 3H bound in water. Consequently, an estimated radiation dose based only on ingestion of tritiated water may underestimate the health effects if the person has also consumed food contaminated with tritium. (Komatsu)
Studies indicate that lower doses of tritium can cause more cell death (Dobson, 1976), mutations (Ito) and chromosome damage (Hori) per dose than higher tritium doses. Tritium can impart damage which is two or more times greater per dose than either x-rays or gamma rays.
(Straume) (Dobson, 1976) There is no evidence of a threshold for damage from 3H exposure; even the smallest amount of tritium can have negative health impacts. (Dobson, 1974) Organically bound tritium (tritium bound in animal or plant tissue) can stay in the body for 10 years or more.
It's often said "of all the elements in nuclear waste tritium is one of the more harmless ones" and while it's more benign than most other radioactive effluents it's toxicity should not be under-estimated.
Tritium can cause mutations, tumors and cell death. (Rytomaa) Tritiated water is associated with significantly decreased weight of brain and genital tract organs in mice (Torok) and can cause irreversible loss of female germ cells in both mice and monkeys even at low concentrations. (Dobson, 1979) (Laskey) Tritium from tritiated water can become incorporated into DNA, the molecular basis of heredity for living organisms. DNA is especially sensitive to radiation. (Hori) A cell's exposure to tritium bound in DNA can be even more toxic than its exposure to tritium in water. (Straume)(Carr)
First, as an isotope of hydrogen (the cell's most ubiquitous element), tritium can be incorporated into essentially all portions of the living machinery; and it is not innocuous -- deaths have occurred in industry from occupational overexposure. R. Lowry Dobson, MD, PhD. (1979)
References;
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Is it possible in the USA to sue for damages due to the nocebo effect (I.e. the flip side of the placebo effect)? The harmful effects are very real.
If yes, then victims could sue sensational journalists. Lawyers who told women they must be sick because of breast implants could be sued by those women who actually suffered because of the nocebo effect. Purveyors of end of the world scenarios and global warming fear mongers could become defendants.
On the other hand, does the first amendment protect all speech no matter how harmful? It is not hard to imagine causing serious harm and even death by speech.
"Japan's Feb. tax receipts up 4.8% on LNG consumption
TOKYO (Kyodo) -- Japanese tax revenues in February increased 4.8 percent from a year earlier to 3,348.73 billion yen as rises in the receipts of tobacco, energy and other taxes more than offset declines in major components, the Finance Ministry said Monday.
Of the revenues on a general-account basis, those from petroleum and coal tax expanded 12.1 percent to 39.57 billion yen due apparently to more consumption of liquefied natural gas by utilities, which have boosted thermal power generation as an alternative to stalled nuclear power following the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi plant..."
So evacuating a few tens of thousands of unimportant rural people has paid off for persons on public payrolls in major Japanese cities.
If the same levels of radiation had threatened Tokyo itself, and these same public servants had had to consider
making *themselves* props in a petrodollar-driven radiophobia drama, they of course wouldn't have. They would
have had a sudden attack of common sense.