Olympic Organizer Wants To Feed Athletes Fukushima Produce

New submitter Grady Martin writes: Toshiaki Endo, Japan's government-appointed parliament member in charge of planning for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, has expressed hopes of supplying the Olympic/Paralympic village with foods grown in Fukushima [Google's autotranslation], stating, 'Using foods from Fukushima in the village is another possibility. I wish to strengthen ties with ground zero in numerous ways.' Would you eat it?

Comments

Yes.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, yes I would.

This so called article is simply scaremongering of the highest order. You should be ashamed!

Re:Yes.

[Applehu Akbar]

Crops from this particular area are undoubtedly better tested than any other food in the world.

Re:Yes.

[Mr D from 63]

Anyone who is surprised by the fact that the long term effects of the Fukushima event won't live up to the FUD, might want to question those sources.

Re:Yes.

[Applehu Akbar]

100 becquerel for kg in the rice? Inasmuch as background is 4500 bq inside the human body, you're going to have to add some radium watch dial scrapings for flavor.

Re:Yes.

[Mr D from 63]

That was clever. now you have a convenient excuse to ignore the facts. Its amazing what people will manufacture in their minds to see the world the way they want to see it. If the equipment were proven accurate right in front of you, no doubt you would find another excuse, and in the end you can always call it a grand conspiracy so you don't have to face reality.

Radiation detection can easily be done do many orders of magnitude greater than needed for this test. You have no basis do doubt the equipment. The food is out there so independent folks can easily test it if they like.

Re:Yes.

[AmiMoJo]

Reading comprehension failure. I didn't say that the equipment wasn't accurate, in fact I'm sure it is. I imagine it is properly calibrated and checked regularly. That's not the problem.

Sample size is an issue. If you test a large sample with a single detector it might give a low reading for say a palette of vegetables. The problem is that one vegetable might have a dangerous concentration of cesium, but it averages out over the palette. That's actually how the test is done by the way, it's not just speculation, and NHK demonstrated this failure mode is possible.

I prefer testing and proof over speculation and assumption.

This is a common mistake made by nuke fans. They think that because there is some equipment that checks fit some problem they can assume it is taken care of. In practice, it requires someone to design a test and others to carry it out correctly.

Re:Yes.

[AmiMoJo]

In what way is a known failure mode, tested carefully and repeatable, "baseless"?

I should point out that in the documentary where they did this test, it was actually scientists from a university (might have been Narita, I forget) working with the farmers to improve their detection methods. The farmers actually care, they want the highest standards both to protect people and to instil confidence in them.

It's kind of hilarious that you would accuse me of not understanding "levels of radiation". It's generally not the levels that are a problem, it's the nature of the radioactive material that is the primary concern with food. Potassium, fine, caesium, not so much.

Re:Yes.

[Kagetsuki]

You're an idiot. No such laws exist and there have been constant news stories about Fukushima and agriculture there.

There are radioactive hot-spots in many places all around the world. Just for reference none of the radioactive hot spots in Tokyo come close to the radioactivity of the famous black sand beaches in Brazil.

The vegetables from Fukushima are safer to eat then the FUD you've been stuffing down.

Re:Yes.

[siddesu]

Come on. I'm not a fan of either nuclear or the Japanese government, but that's just crap.

I don't know where in Japan you live, but in our jichikai (which is somewhere in the 24 districts of Tokyo) the old ladies had a contract with a private lab to test for "radiation poisoning" in early March 2011 already. They bought two geiger counters too, and even walked about for months measuring stuff. To their huge disappointment, not much was found. This was a completely private effort, that is, the "government" was not involved in any way.

If the jichikai tests had found something, anything, the news and the Internets would be all over the place (see below **). At the least, I would have heard about it. Also, I doubt ours was the only jichikai that went from totally unconcerned to seriously over-equipped and over-zealous about detecting radiation.

They were not the only ones measuring. Virtually every university, public or private, is doing measurements. So do or did many supermarket chains for a while. If there was a massive radiation contamination, it would have been found and reported. You can easily dig day-by-day data about radiation measurements, including independent ones, if you speak a little Japanese. Yes, they are still measuring.

As for the 'hot spots' in Tokyo, I recall two. One was a large cache of radium buried in a private garden by the grandkids of a watch repairman, who passed away in the 60s, the other was some equipment that was disposed of similarly by a company. Neither had anything to do with Fukushima, and IIRC, both were found by citizens with geiger counters and both made huge news on the TV, all channels covering and discussing them for days **. Care to mention what other spots are there, which were caused by Fukushima and I don't know about?

To wrap it up, it is quite impossible to hide a large scale contamination in Japan in the long run, because people here are health-conscious and wealthy enough to be able to run all kinds of tests independently, and the media, while not completely without influence, are free to cover what they want and some dislike the current government enough to publish anything that will harm its image.

So, either provide serious evidence about this conspiracy, or just shut up.

Re:Yes.

[AmiMoJo]

You can't measure the potential danger in becquerels, you also have consider the type of radioactive substances in the food. Potassium isn't a problem as the body regulates it and ensures that it does not concentrate in areas where it could do damage. Caesium, on the other hand, can cause cancer even in small quantities if it ends up in organs and sits there gently irradiating them for decades.

It's the reason why so many children have to have their thyroid glands removed. Small amounts of radioactive particles accumulate there, and it is particularly vulnerable to that kind of damage leading to cancer, despite the measurable emissions being very low.

Athletes: Bring a Geiger Counter...

[NicBenjamin]

And have a long talk with your team doctor about how radioactive is too radioactive to be safe.

There's a lot of natural radioactivity in the world your body deals with every day, so just coming from Fukushima is not that scary.

competitors bring their own food

[Gravis Zero]

this is only an issue for spectators because all the competitors bring their own food for good reason.

competitors don't want...
* to become ill from food you aren't used to eating.
* to get disqualified because a jingoistic jerk spiked their food.

This ignores the team diet requirements:

[Elfich47]

Most competitors are on very regimented diets. The last thing they want to do is upset their digestive tracks in the days leading up to a major competition. Teams routinely bring their own food with them. This was a "story" during the Russian winter Olympics when the Russians tried to put a hold on Chobani yogurt that was coming in the country by the pallet (amoungst all the other food coming in). The news was trying to drum it up as a disaster (right next to the wild dogs wandering around in the hotels).

I expect to see the Japanese Olympic committee push the idea of Fukashema produce; the teams will mouth polite noises at the appropriate points - and then continue with the diets that have been developed and tracked for each team member.

As competitors are knocked out of competition you will see more variation and experimentation in their diets. Anyone that is still in competition will be adhering to their diets.

Re: Would you eat it?

[fustakrakich]

More like how many toxic elements are included...

Yeah, the Roundup will kill you first.