HIROSAKI, Aomori — Radioactive iodine levels exceeding international limits were detected in the thyroid glands of five people who lived near the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant during the meltdowns there, researchers here have revealed.
Findings by the research team, led by professor Shinji Tokonami from Hirosaki University, showed that 50 of 65 people checked from April 11 to 17 last year had radioactive iodine-131 in their thyroids, with 26 absorbing radiation doses over 10 millisieverts, and five with doses over 50 millisieverts — the upper limit set by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
“After detecting high levels of radiation exposure in people who stayed in Namie, we were able to grasp part of the reality of the disaster,” says Tokonami.
All five people with doses exceeding 50 millisieverts — the point at which the IAEA recommends taking iodine pills to prevent thyroid cancer — were from Namie, Fukushima Prefecture — three who were still living in the town’s Tsushima district at the time, and two who had moved to the prefectural capital about two weeks after the outbreak of the nuclear crisis. Most of Namie lies within the 20-kilometer radius no-go zone around the Fukushima plant.
The survey covered 12 other people from Namie’s Tsushima district, and 48 people from other municipalities along the prefecture’s coast who had evacuated to the city of Fukushima shortly after the March 11 disasters. The team made their dosage calculations based on the assumption that the residents, who varied from infants to people in their 80s, had inhaled radioactive iodine — which has a short half-life — immediately after the outbreak of the disaster.
The highest exposure from radioiodine overall was 87 millisieverts, while the highest among children under 15 was 47 millisieverts.
The researchers’ findings exceed data collected by the government in a similar survey in March 2011. Among the total of 1,080 children the government surveyed in Iwaki and other Fukushima Prefecture municipalities at the time, the highest estimated doses stood at around 30 millisieverts.
“The central and prefectural governments should conduct follow-up surveys and take other measures to deal with potential health issues,” Tokonami stated.
The Hirosaki University team will submit its findings to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, and brief the residents.
Mainichi Shimbun, March 10, 2012
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/national/archive/news/2012/03/10/20120310p2a00m0na005000c.html
Fukushima city sees more patients with insomnia, high blood pressure: survey
FUKUSHIMA — The rate of insomnia and high blood pressure among people in this city had grown significantly in the first six months since the outbreak of the nuclear disaster in comparison to data from the previous year, a recently revealed survey shows.
The poll, conducted by a medical care cooperative, which operates several clinics in the capital city of Fukushima, shows that between March 11 and Aug. 31, 2011, patients in the city who were diagnosed with insomnia stood at 27 percent more than the same period in the preceding year, while those suffering from high blood pressure had correspondingly increased by 13 percent.
The cooperative obtained the results by analyzing data from a total of 4,551 patients who visited one of the institution’s clinics in the city of Fukushima between March 11 and Aug. 31 last year, and compared it with those of the 4,434 patients who visited the clinic in the same period in 2010.
According to the findings, patients suffering from an inability to sleep had increased from a total of 292 in 2010 to 370 in 2011, while those diagnosed with high blood pressure had increased from 493 to 557 in the surveyed period. Furthermore, patients diagnosed with herpes zoster — a type of skin rash, often associated with a weakened immune system, among other causes — had increased by more than two times, from 19 to 50.
People diagnosed with hyperlipidemia — excessive fat in the blood, which often occurs due to a lack of physical exercise — had also increased by 7 percent, from 418 to 449.
According to officials from the cooperative, it is likely that fear of radiation and stress following the outbreak of the crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant, have worsened health conditions among many residents.
Fukushima, a city located relatively far from the nuclear plant, was not among the areas that were most severely affected in the triple disasters. There were almost no damaged buildings in the city caused by the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami, and most of the city’s residents were neither evacuated nor had to live in temporary housing units following the meltdowns at the nuclear power plant.
However, accumulated airborne radiation doses measured in the city’s central Sugitsuma district after the outbreak of the nuclear disaster have stood at approximately 4 millisieverts since March 2011, a comparatively high level, putting the lives of residents at constant risk of insecurity and anxiety.
“In terms of herpes zoster anomalies, it is not clear whether the cause is related to the nuclear crisis or not. However, there is a possibility that the main cause behind the increase in such cases is the building up of anxieties among many people,” an official with the cooperative said.
Mainichi Shimbun, March 5, 2012
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/national/archive/news/2012/03/05/20120305p2a00m0na010000c.html
Patients fell victim as Fukushima hospitals were isolated in wake of nuclear disaster
On March 15, 2011, four days after the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami hit, the government ordered residents within 20 to 30 kilometers of the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant to stay indoors following hydrogen explosions at the plant a day earlier.
Futaba Hospital in Okuma, Fukushima Prefecture, which was already under orders to evacuate, had trouble finding another medical institution to transport patients. As a result, patients started dying one after the other, making the situation at the Prime Minister’s Office tense.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano and others said that patients within 30 kilometers of the crippled nuclear power plant were safe so long as they stayed indoors. They ordered officials concerned to secure hospitals to accommodate fleeing patients in case of another explosion.
But Takeshi Karasawa, councillor at the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, predicted that hospitals within the 30-kilometer zone would become inoperative sooner or later. If orders to stay indoors continued, he surmised, people and supplies would not reach the hospital. The facility would lose doctors and employees and become inoperative, and somebody would have to transport abandoned patients.
But there had been no precedent for moving all hospital patients and long-term care recipients out of any particular prefecture. “We did not know who should do what and how to transport them,” Karasawa recalled.
On March 15 Karasawa picked three young medical officials from among the ministry’s staff and ordered them to go to Fukushima. One of them was Haruhiko Hakuno of the ministry’s Health Science Division. “Please go to Fukushima now,” Karasawa told Hakuno, who asked, “What for?” Karasawa said, “Just go.”
Hakuno did not know details of his mission until his arrival in Fukushima Prefecture on March 16. At 9:30 a.m. that day, he learned for the first time that his immediate job was to produce a list of medical institutions and the number of patients within 20 and 30 kilometers of the stricken nuclear plant.
Confusion was gripping Fukushima Prefecture’s disaster measure headquarters on March 16. Hakuno’s cell phone ran out of battery due to numerous phone calls from the ministry, the Prime Minister’s Office and other parties.
There were six medical institutions within 20 to 30 kilometers of the nuclear plant, along with welfare facilities. Hakuno telephoned the hospitals to ask about them and their patients. The supply shortage was serious. “Patients will starve to death,” a hospital official pleaded. Some patients were too frail to be relocated.
It was well after noon on March 17 that the prefectural disaster measure headquarters, the prefectural police, Self-Defense Forces and fire departments assembled for a joint meeting for the first time. One prefecture told them, “We are not going to allow patients to cross the prefectural border unless they are cleared of nuclear radiation.”
Meanwhile, two seriously ill patients at a hospital in Minamisoma died due to a lack of medicine.
On March 18, a campaign began to transport all patients within the 30-kilometer zone. But Tetsuya Yajima, assistant minister for technical affairs at the Health Ministry, who was assigned to the crisis management center at the Prime Minister’s Office, told the Mainichi, “The order to evacuate patients did not come from the Prime Minister’s Office.” He expressed regret that the Prime Minister’s Office and the Fukushima prefectural disaster policy headquarters operated independently without policy coordination.
* Mainichi Shimbun, February 27, 2012
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/national/archive/news/2012/02/27/20120227p2a00m0na010000c.html
High radiation level logged in town near Fukushima plant
TOKYO (Kyodo) — High levels of radiation have been detected in municipalities in evacuation zones around the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, with the highest reading of 470 millisieverts per year recorded in one town, a midterm report on an Environment Ministry survey showed Friday.
A survey conducted between Nov. 7 and Jan. 16 showed that the annual readings topped 50 millisieverts — a level deemed uninhabitable under a proposed new classification — in many spots north-northwest of the plant that was crippled by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
The highest level of 470 millisieverts was logged at a spot in Futaba, northwest of the plant, while the lowest level of 5.8 millisieverts was detected in another part of the same town, the survey said.
The results were similar to those in an earlier survey by the ministry of science using airplanes.
The Environment Ministry plans to compile a final report on the survey by the end of March so the government can use the data to reclassify a no-go zone and evacuation zone near the plant into three categories in April.
The three categories are an uninhabitable area with annual radiation levels of 50 millisieverts or more, an area with levels between 20 and 50 millisieverts where residents would be restricted, and another area with levels below 20 millisieverts where residents would be allowed to return in stages.
The transport ministry has decided to reduce the no-fly zone over Fukushima Prefecture from a 20-kilometer radius of the Fukushima plant to 3-km radius based on the survey conducted by the science ministry earlier in February, effective from midnight Friday.
The highest radiation level was 12 microsieverts per hour at an altitude of 150 meters. The transport ministry determined that the smaller no-fly zone will not undermine safety as estimated radiation exposure at that altitude during 1,000 hours of flying per year would be less than 20 millisieverts, the level set by the government for designating an evacuation zone, it said.
Meanwhile, the Environment Ministry also said that high levels of radioactive cesium have been detected in ash and firewood in eight prefectures in the Tohoku and Kanto regions, with the highest reading of 240,000 becquerels per kilogram measured in ash from a household in Minamisoma, Fukushima Prefecture.
In a survey conducted on ash and firewood from 65 households, 163,000 becquerels of cesium was also detected in ash from a household in Kawamata in Fukushima. At two households in the prefecture, firewood from around the houses had been collected and used for boiling bathwater.
Waste with radiation levels exceeding 100,000 becquerels needs to be kept in a disposal site with its walls and base sealed with reinforced concrete to keep out rainwater, and only waste with radiation levels of 8,000 becquerels or below can be disposed of like normal waste.
More than 8,000 becquerels of cesium was detected in ash from 13 households — three in Iwate, one in Miyagi, eight in Fukushima and one in Ibaraki prefectures — while up to 1,460 becquerels was detected in firewood, the ministry said.
Kyodo Press, February 25, 2012
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/national/archive/news/2012/02/25/20120225p2g00m0dm015000c.html
Overwork death recognized for worker at Fukushima plant
SHIZUOKA (Kyodo) — The death last May of a man who had engaged in work at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant after the nuclear crisis erupted there in March was recognized Friday as caused by overwork, according to a lawyer representing the man’s bereaved family.
A local labor standards inspection office in Yokohama, acting on a workers’ compensation claim by the family of Nobukatsu Osumi, who died of a heart attack at age 60, determined that his cardiac infarction was caused by excessive physical and mental burdens arising from working overnight wearing protective gear and mask, lawyer Akio Ohashi said.
It is the first time the death of a worker involving the crisis, triggered by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, was recognized as caused by overwork, according to the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry.
There have been 35 cases of workers’ compensation claims in connection with the nuclear disaster, and three of them involve a worker’s death. Aside from Osumi’s case, the two others involved workers who died due to tsunami waves on the day of the disaster.
Osumi, a subcontract worker dispatched by a construction firm in Shizuoka Prefecture, was engaged in piping and other work at a waste disposal facility of the plant in Fukushima Prefecture from May 13. He complained of not feeling well the following morning and was taken to a hospital where he died shortly afterward.
Kyodo Press, February 25, 2012
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/national/archive/news/2012/02/25/20120225p2g00m0dm014000c.html