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Researchers Say Fukushima Child Cancer Rates 20-50x Higher Than Expected (ap.org)
New submitter JackSpratts writes: According to the Associated Press, "A new study says children living near the Fukushima nuclear meltdowns have been diagnosed with thyroid cancer at a rate 20 to 50 times that of children elsewhere, a difference the authors contend undermines the government's position that more cases have been discovered in the area only because of stringent monitoring.
Most of the 370,000 children in Fukushima prefecture (state) have been given ultrasound checkups since the March 2011 meltdowns at the tsunami-ravaged Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant. The most recent statistics, released in August, show that thyroid cancer is suspected or confirmed in 137 of those children, a number that rose by 25 from a year earlier. Elsewhere, the disease occurs in only about one or two of every million children per year by some estimates."
Most of the 370,000 children in Fukushima prefecture (state) have been given ultrasound checkups since the March 2011 meltdowns at the tsunami-ravaged Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant. The most recent statistics, released in August, show that thyroid cancer is suspected or confirmed in 137 of those children, a number that rose by 25 from a year earlier. Elsewhere, the disease occurs in only about one or two of every million children per year by some estimates."
Of course when you go looking for something, you find more of it.
"20-50 times higher"... right?
Still only 137 suspected or confirmed (note, not all confirmed).
Big percentage of small number = slightly bigger small number
Are the usual pro-nuke ppl. here going to trumpet the same old "no injuries from Fukushima" line, over and over again?
Unless you have a double blind study to point to, why the fuck are you linking to some 3rd-hand article? "A new study says" is meaningless, in this context.
Don't cite articles and call it news. We have a standard of proof, so follow it or you're part of the misinformation problem.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
Once it was a standard Item to Equip in your cool backyard or basement buried shelter medical kit.
Iodine Tablets that protect the thyroid form radiation?
They knew this in the 50's why aren't the children receiving this now as a precaution? Or is it now considered unsafe?
the spelling error in the title shows how much effort they took...
Reserchers Say Fukushima Child Cancer Rates 20-50x Higher Than Expected (ap.org)
Reserchers... reserchers.. can someone buy the editor a vowel
http://fukushimavoice-eng2.blo...
found in the comments of the article.
some kind of english translation, if you take it at face value, they were real enough to operate on, at least 99 of them were.
Correct treatment? Radioactive iodine abalation.
If only they had some radiation with which to treat those cancers... particularly radiation in shell fish, given shell fish are a common source of iodine.
Isn't it more likely that avoiding eating fish would account for the difference (assuming there is one, after you control for "suspected cases", and you compare to a relatively unexposed genetically similar population of children elsewhere in Japan, I mean)?
"Reserchers"? Seems even the words are not immune to mutations.
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
"Clean, safe, and too cheap to meter."
You are welcome on my lawn.
...precious modernistic energy and technology!
The study was released online this week and is being published in the November issue of Epidemiology, produced by the Herndon, Virginia-based International Society for Environmental Epidemiology. The data comes from tests overseen by Fukushima Medical University
It sounds like that journal has been around for more than 25 years, and the study was done by a PUBLIC medical university. Why should there be such a great bias there to defeat the nuclear industry?
Give the editor a break... he has a vowel obstruction!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
One of those things I never understood.. how can arsenic be both a carcinogen, and a commonly used cancer cure?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
N/T
Cancer cures are generally (always?) accomplished by killing cancerous cells, they're typically things that are bad for your body which is why they're targeted.
checked the pdf linked in the rando article, don't read japanese, but google translate seems to believe that the blog post reflects the pdf reasonably well
https://www.pref.fukushima.lg....
which seems like a pretty shitty looking but reasonably legitimate government website.
so yeah. i'm not bothered enough to question it further.
who is they? that seems like a slashdot error.
It's okay, because "nobody died in this nuclear accident".
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
well, from what i gather pediatric thyroid cancer is 20ish in a million, vs here you've got something in 370,000?
don't care enough to dig in further.
just that the article seems to be good for the numbers and and it's not 1 real case vs 135 false positives.
The GOOD news is that most thyroid cancers are treatable and survivable - except for the undifferentiated thyroid carcinoma which will kill you rather quickly and nothing can be done.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Well, if one kid's cancer is discovered early and treated due to the enhanced screening started after the Fukushima event, that kid may be lucky that Fukushima took place, otherwise it may have been too late when discovered.
If they separate them they'll not be as scary and not have the desired impact. We can't have that, can we?
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
I'm not really sure that you should be commenting about the editing practices unless your post was an attempt at humor? You seem to have some extra words in there.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Yeah, a 12 mile exclusion zone from a Quad Chernobyl, pretty much.
Of course, none of the old rods that were in storage in the pools above the reactors burned and vaporized into the air, or anything. :) After they were exposed to the air for days or weeks.
Hydrogen explosions in the main buildings when it was vented is the big memory I have; seeing that on the news, and knowing why there's hydrogen to vent, I know pretty well what happened to the reactors.
Vitamin R; it's good for you. :)
(to the paid astroturfers:)
Check out what happens to an irradiation victim; there are IAEA papers on criticality accidents that are very informative.
A real asshole would wish that all the paid astroturfers that have kids get to experience this first hand, with their families. But I'm not an asshole.
The Louis Slotkin incident in only one of such occurrences; that's a rough way to fucking go. Look it up.
A nosebleed can be a nosebleed.
A nosebleed due to sudden temporary or permanent leukemia is a radiation exposure symptom.
(permanent as in all the blood cells dying; a lot like ebola, really, at the end)
Stories like this make it easier to make out the astroturfers; it's amazing that people actually get paid to shill. I'll never understand, I guess. :)
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
The thing is that current cancer therapies cause cancer. The the risk is just less than 100%, so it is worth it.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
The screening data is from Fukushima Medical University. They are not making these claims. Their data is being used by the "environmental" society you referenced in a biased manner. They used the guise for the Fukushima Medical University to try and claim a peer review, however society study was not. I see they fooled you as well. They are good at that.
What's wrong with you?
Yup, it's fucked up so badly that it kills fewer people per MWh generated than any other power source, including solar, wind, and hydro. Shame on us for creating the safest form of power generation in the history of mankind.
You can't compare to a vacuum. You can't look at fatalities or injuries caused by a nuclear accident, compare to some hypothetical universe where that nuclear power plant (and only that nuclear power plant) didn't exist, and criticize nuclear power for killing those people. A valid comparison must use opportunity cost. Everything has some danger, some risk of death.. If the nuclear plant hadn't been there, some other type of plant would've had to be there to generate the same amount of electricity. That's the alternative case you have to compare against, not a vacuum. How many deaths would that alternate power plant have caused?
When you crunch the statistics that way, you find that had the nuclear plant been replaced by any other type of power plant, statistically you would've killed more people. Even wind, solar, and hydro are more dangerous. Or put in relative terms, replacing coal, gas, hydro, wind, and solar plants with nuclear plants saves lives.
Rates are 20-50x higher than _normal_, everyone _expected_ a significant increase.
Parent did NOT deserve 'Troll'. The study mentioned in TA is controversial. People are moderating with their balls not their brains, and their balls shrivel up when anyone suggests there may not be some dire emergency at Fukushima related to killer radiation. But even so,
We've seen this hoax before, why am I not surprised there are people still pushing it? The only difference with this one is how poorly written it is. Cancer rates are actually lower than expected/normal around Fukushima.
Calling it a 'hoax' is going way too far, you should calm down too. It's still early to make definitive statements about cancers, but there is certainly no 'spike'. One of the main reasons the government took the (courageous) position that the thyroid abnormalities were unlikely to be associated with the disaster was, abnormal nodules were detected 'too soon' after the disaster when screening began, and their own health professionals assured them that these conditions take years to develop and were more likely the result of some pre-existing condition. And the last in-depth study was some 10 years prior, so when Fukushima occurred there was a lack of recent baseline. A cause for concern surely but not
The same old deception. Use data from ultrsensitive tests that detect more pre-cancerous cells than what is found under normal testing, then claim that is an increase. But when these same tests are performed on control groups anywhere, they find similar increases in detection of pre-cancerous cells. A simple read of these claims show they completely lack any reasonable baseline or control group methods. Add it to the list of deceptions that keep being debunked but keep showing up.
I'm upset at Fukushima disinfo too, but what can you do about it, especially when the AP is clearly in the market for scare stories, and the usual journalistic burden of proof and balance that applies in other things is relaxed. If your own child was given ultrasound and a 'nodule' showed up, you would not be subject to a hysterical reaction. The doctor would assure you that it should be monitored, but they do form and dissolve naturally. You'd be given nutritional supplements. Yet researchers feel free to insinuate a cause when it suits them. And even if they don't, journalists feel free to insinuate on their behalf by offering side-stories that make a 'connection'. To the slashdotter who ejaculated
It's their fault for not being born in the great state of AMERIKA!
and was also modded Troll... you're not far off the mark. The United States and others have added potassium iodide (for iodine) to its table salt for some 80 years now to counter endemic Goitre. Traditionally Japan has not iodized its salt because the national diet has been heavy with seaweed, a natural source, and there were were concerns that fortified salt plus seaweed might supply an over-abundance of iodine, which is also harmful. Perhaps some Japanese children have been starting to prefer Western diets and should, as are other rural populations, consider the benefits of iodization.
http://educate-yourself.org/cn...
http://skeptoid.com/blog/2013/...
http://www.aljazeera.com/indep...
all good sources for learning about the hysterical Fukushima over reaction that pull no punches. A lot of what has passed for 'news' has been crap. Look out for closet anti-Islam liberal bias though. Linking to the Christian Science Monitor is OK but l
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
Stress does all sorts of bad stuff to you, and the constant stress of having your hometown flooded, irradiated, possibly losing family members and being permanently uprooted can't be good.
OMG ! All of this paranoia.
Radiation level was far too low to actually cause detectable increase in cancer cases.
I'm positive when this is all said and done, 10 years from now there will be no significant increase in cancer cases and no reason to believe in additional cancer deaths over normal levels.
Having small cancer formations happen to a lot of people without actually being a 'cancer case'. It could be benign, it could also not evolve into cancer (uncontrolled multiplication of cells).
Radiation safety standards are too paranoid.
Chernobyl was calculated to kill 2 million people. Instead running counter is around 1000 people (including suicide by vodka) and highest scientific peer reviewed estimates less than 10 thousand people. From 10 thousand to 2 million, that's 200x discrepancy.
TMI killed nobody and didn't cause any detectable increase in cancer levels.
So once again, the anti nuclear paranoid are creating a whole story of mass cancer cases and deaths, so once this is disproven those with anti nuclear bias can cry "conspiracy theory with tepco, japanese government and IAEA sweeping it under the rug".
From sea level radiation levels in LA or NYC to airline flying = 20x increase in radiation levels. From sea level to ISS = 100x increase in radiation levels. Yet pilots/flight attendants and astronauts aren't dying from cancer in droves. Exposure levels from Fukushima were much lower than ISS. So no cancers and no deaths.