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The Best Science Writing Online 2012
Showcasing more than fifty of the most provocative, original, and significant online essays from 2011, The Best Science Writing Online 2012 will change the way...
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On March 13 of this year, 17 year old Yuuko Sato and 13 year old Mina Sato left the only home they'd ever known on an organic farm in Fukushima prefecture. They now live more than two hours by train to the north, in Yamagata. Their mother, Sachiko, explained the move via translator as fulfilling "the minimum duty of a parent" to protect her children. The danger they fled: radiation from the meltdown of three nearby nuclear reactors on March 11.
But not every child escaped. Some 300,000 children remain in radioactive zones in Fukushima, according to Sachiko Sato. She and her children were in New York City to protest a United Nations event on the safety of nuclear power. Some Fukushima children—and their parents—were actually evacuated from towns with relatively low radiation levels to places with higher levels. That error was due to incomplete information on radiation hotspots from all levels of Japanese government in the wake of the meltdowns at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
Sachiko Sato says "the scenery in Fukushima is as beautiful as last year but all over us is radiation." She adds, "can you understand the pain of farmers who have to abandon the land they have cared for?"
That abandonment is not complete. Mortgages and property taxes still have to be paid on that land, with little help from the government. And so Ms. Sato has stayed behind in Fukushima to meet such financial obligations. Many families have similarly been torn apart in the continuing aftermath of the earthquake, tsunami and meltdowns. The triple disaster has also split apart once closeknit communities—some who stay consider those who leave to be traitors.
Ms. Sato calls the two million residents of the area "guinea pigs.” The government has simply raised what are considered safe radiation levels for contamination in food and water. The new levels are much higher than those in effect in the U.S. or even near Chernobyl. And in April, the government raised the so-called safe level of radiation exposure for children from 1 milliSievert per year to 20 milliSeiverts per year. Ms. Sato asks quote "were they saying that people's ability to withstand radiation exposure had increased miraculously?" She adds "low level radiation exposure will continue--and we will see the results."
—David Biello
[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]
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24 Comments
Add CommentNews Flash for you.....People in America and elsewhere around the world get 3.5 millisievert per year no matter what you do. You have gotten this your whole life. There are places in India and Iran that people live that give them 50 millisievert per year, just due to background radiation. What are the effects on these people?? None! Because we have evolved to live with radiation, we have lived in an ocean of it since time began, there is no escaping it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou get hit 15,000 times per second by ionizing radiation. Does anyone bother to tell you this?? No, because the "Scary News" would be less scary. And it might make people who spend a lot of money, time, and energy traveling half way around the world, in a 25 Millisievert per year field of radiation while flying, look rather silly protesting something which has been scientifically proven to be harmless. This would be like a fish complaining about somebody shooting it with a squirt gun and getting it wet, we all live in an ocean of radiation, we call it the Universe.
The radiation the Japanese and the US West coast is getting is NOT the radiation from an X-ray or cosmos. It is from particles that sit in the body and cause cancer. The body may rid itself of these particles eventually. To compare ambient radiation with these particles is absurd, ignorance, or propaganda.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe radiation in question is indeed external sources of radiation Jimmy, no difference. For you to say that they are talking about internal doses of radiation is completely not the topic here, and for you to think it so, is absurd, ignorant, and scary propaganda. Don't confuse the issue by bringing up something which isn't even part of the discussion. Who does that?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisChaz in Montana - Your assertions are both right and wrong. We are evolved to deal with radiation, and studies of populations that are located in naturally high background environments show that there are built in coping mechanisms within each of us. Your statement that the radiation from Fukushima is "indeed external" is off the mark. The radiation exposure there is both internal (via breathing in airborne isotopes, drinking contaminated water, and eating contaminated food), and external (via elevated levels of isotopes surrounding the organism). Why else would taking stable isotope iodine benefit people surrounding the accident site, if there was no danger of absorbing Iodine 131? Chernobyl taught us this lesson well.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe science of radiation is an extremely complex study of the interactions between extremely dangerous energies and living things, many of whom I care for deeply. The fact that this complexity, danger, and emotion exist in such close proximity is a recipe for over-reaction. Cut people a little slack. . .
Radiation ain't that complex, we have evolved on Earth with it for 3 billion years, it has always been present. People tip=toe around it like the only sources of radiation are Nuke plants and x-ray machines. Well, Surprise...they're not. The Iodine 131 decayed to oblivion from Fukushima 4 months ago. Yeah, there are isotopes that may be around from the plant which may be internalized, but again, we've been eatin and breathin radioactive stuff for billions of years, so I still say, Educate yourself. Base your reactions on reality not some fear creating, story selling, half the facts crap we've been getting from the media.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm astounded by the abject ignorance people have about radiation. Google "Ladek Spa", you vacation there to bathe in the radioactive waters for healthful benefits.....(which of course I would never do) but it proves my point. People overreact to background radiation, just like they think getting dosed by a radiation bath is good for them. Which is it? It's what the man tells you it is, and the man ain't too smart most of the time either.
ChazinMT
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou are correct that radiation has been around for as long as life has existed, but, the levels wer VERY LOW until we actively started mining uranium it was at best a trace element, although it was used to tint glass a peculiar shade of yellow. I would ask you to consider, if you can, the difference between a 1 week spa treatment with radiation exposure, to daily exposure, week in and week out. I suppose an authority such as you know that Uranium miner have 10-12x the rate of lung cancer vs. smokers...just random chance right? And of course the people who lived downwind from Fernault OH and got leukemia from the piles of radioactive tailings were just unlucky. If you truly believe what you are saying move to Fukushima...I sure you can get a deal
All I can say is Wow. Very low until uranium mining was started. Wow.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWrong, Wrong, Wrong and Wow.
Radiation has always been around, cosmic sources and naturally occurring radon are the biggest of them, these did not just start up in the 40's. Been around since time began.
Where do you come up with this idea? Show me a web link that states Uranium mining is the source of currently "High" levels of background radiation, what do they theorize it was prior to uranium mining.
I make my home in Montana, background radiation there is 2-3 times elsewhere due to being up at 5,000 ft and amongst the Rocky Mountains, not too many newspaper articles written about the huge health risk of that last I looked.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Background_radiation
If you can be bothered to read.
You're just wrong. Radioactive Cesium is one of the main contaminants. It has a high biological uptake, a long half-life, and a long biological half-life. You're simply ignorant of the facts, or choose to ignore them.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat being said, there are a lot of factors that need to be taken into account when you decide what areas to abandon and what areas not to abandon or to clean up. There are acceptable levels of contamination, as much as some people don't want to hear that. The real problem here is that the Japanese government and nuclear industry have destroyed whatever level of credibility they might ever have had. Nobody is going to, nor should they, accept anything coming from that direction as accurate or construed in the best interests of ordinary people.
I'm astounded at YOUR ignorance, Chaz. Are you trying to say that humans are impervious to radioactive fallout? Time for you to read a book or two.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe radiation from fallout in some parts of Japan well exceeds the evacuation zones in Chernobyl, which in itself has caused approximately a million excess deaths from cancer, birth defects, and other medical problems. Produce and meats from Japan have been condemned inside Japan and by nations they trade, with good reason - in fact not enough of them have been condemned.
Please take the time to inform yourself. I do congratulate you though for refraining from bringing "obamination" and "libtards" into the conversation, and for not claiming that "physicists are a bunch of dummies".
Pugsley, Show me where you get the data on Chernobyl. Show me where there has been a statistically significant increase in cancer, birth defects or other medical problems. This comment box will allow you to put links in it. I have no interest in politics or myths, only facts.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBTW http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs303/en/index.html
(really no mention of a million excess deaths here, but of course, the source is somewhat suspect)
Why do I feel like a man alone amongst a bunch of media controlled mental zombies? Do any of you have Google to where you can go and see if what you put up here as "Fact" has any basis in reality at all?
In response to the cruel comments by ChazinMT:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this/q "There are places in India and Iran that people live that give them 50 millisievert per year, just due to background radiation. What are the effects on these people?? None! /Unq
None is incorrect, Its more like: The effects are within or on the edge of acceptable standards. Japan maintains 20 mSv/y for their general population, 5 mSv/y for children an pregnant woman,100 mSv/y for Nuke workers which has been raised temporarily to 250 mSv/y to abate the Fukushima crises. But be aware that not every body has the same response to an amount of radiation, so some people might develop effects.
In that respect, I consider it a wise decision of mother Sachiko to take here kids up North.
And as we are talking radiation, Have you ever asked a scientist involved in a criticality-accident how (s)he survived?
/q "we all live in an ocean of radiation, we call it the Universe."/unq
You better take into account that Earth's magnetism acts as a shield against cosmic radiation, so we don't get that much from that side. However, Astronauts do built up excess radiation.
/q"The Iodine 131 decayed to oblivion from Fukushima 4 months ago. Yeah, there are isotopes that may be around from the plant which may be internalized, but again, we've been eatin and breathin radioactive stuff for billions of years, so I still say, Educate yourself. Base your reactions on reality not some fear creating, story selling, half the facts crap"/Unq
Why talk only 131Iodine with 8 days half-live and not 134Cesnium, 137Cesnium with half-lives of 30 years. Strontium etc.
Because it is 'you' whom gives the 'half facts crap...' to suit your agenda.
/q"the man ain't too smart most of the time either."/Unq
In that respect we agree and is IMHO the only sensible thing you have said.
Furthermore, you write your comments from a 'lazy chair' which you probably had from before 3/11. Your woman and her children where in the 'Limelight' of a severe INES 7 Nuclear accident.
But the article is a message to the American Public:
-300,000 children remain in radioactive zones
-farmers had to abandon the land they have cared for
-Governments manipulation of various safety levels of radiation exposures.
-The NY Visit to protest a United Nations event on the safety of nuclear power.
On the last item I have the opinion that, since it is the veto pressure of the Americans to make every UN IAEA lessons learned rule from Fukushima 'Voluntarily', Americans either don't care or are ill informed on the issues of nuclear safety!
EdH
"Show me where you get the data on Chernobyl. Show me where there has been a statistically significant increase in cancer, birth defects or other medical problems. This comment box will allow you to put links in it. I have no interest in politics or myths, only facts."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou might just read the ARTICLE ON WIKIPEDIA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster_effects
I mean come on, you can do better than that. You're living in loony-land here.
"Several studies have found that the incidence of thyroid cancer among children in Belarus, Ukraine and Russia has risen sharply. The IAEA notes "1800 documented cases of thyroid cancer in children who were between 0 and 14 years of age when the disaster occurred, which is as far higher than normal""
"In West Berlin, Germany, prevalence of Down syndrome (trisomy 21) peaked 9 months following the main fallout."
"The prevalence of NTDs was 1.7 to 9.2 per 1,000 births, but during the first 6 months of 1987 increased to 20 per 1,000"
"wenty five years after the catastrophe, restriction orders remain in place in the production, transportation and consumption of food contaminated by Chernobyl fallout. In the UK, they remain in place on 369 farms covering 750 km² and 200,000 sheep. In parts of Sweden and Finland, restrictions are in place on stock animals, including reindeer, in natural and near-natural environments. "In certain regions of Germany, Austria, Italy, Sweden, Finland, Lithuania and Poland, wild game (including boar and deer), wild mushrooms, berries and carnivorous fish from lakes reach levels of several thousand Bq per kg of caesium-137", while "in Germany, caesium-137 levels in wild boar muscle reached 40,000 Bq/kg. The average level is 6,800 Bq/kg, more than ten times the EU limit of 600 Bq/kg", according to the TORCH 2006 report."
Clearly there are significant long term effects. Clearly there is a lot of controversy about how many people the disaster killed/will kill, ranging from a low of 4000 (UN) to a high of 985,000 (NY Academy of Sciences).
Dear Chaz,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFor all your feigned indignation, you did not read my comment. I DID NOT SAY THAT all background radiation was due to mining...I said that the AMOUNT of background radiation has risen since then, the Anatartic Ice Cores PROVE THAT. Second you did not have the courtesy to acknowledge that there is a difference from visiting a spa to living in an area with high radiation (and I do NOT mean the granite countertops in your kitchen or the Rocky Mts.) You did not address Fernald and the issues associated with it (but I guess to do so might cause you to do some hurtful mental gymnastics). Still I challenge you again, if you truly believe it, move to Fukushima. PS. Before you start casting aspirations on my credentials, I worked at ROCKY FLATS extracting plutonium and the w88...where did you work McDOnalds?
Another case of governments privatising profits and socialising the losses.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiswe live in a world where socialism exists exclusively for the rich. Capitalism is the burden of the middle classes and the poor.
If I lived in the area I would not pay a cent in taxes. Even if it meant going to jail. People of the Fukushima prefecture stop paying all taxes now.
EB, I'm going to be crawling around in a Nuclear Power plant starting next week, I'm a rad worker, and ex Navy nuke as well. I've been thinking about radiation, working around it, and learning since 1982. So there. Even if I did work at McDonalds, I'd still be right in what I say. So, I'm not sure what occupation has to do with it. In fact there are plenty of people who I work with who haven't a clue about any of this. Just as I'm sure plenty of folks at Rocky Flats wouldn't know what a Mae West curve was if it hit them in the head with a mackerel.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMy point of the Spa which you misconstrued is that people will go bathe in the crap thinking it's good for them because a bunch of jackwagons say it's good, then you have a bunch of people freaking out over a rise in the background radiation because another bunch of jackwagons say you should freak out.
The main point I want to make is that we have been surrounded by radiation forever, and forever will be, no matter where you live. People do not understand this even a little bit. Sorry if I come across as crass, it's just that if I'm very polite and technical in my presentation, nobody understands what I'm saying or what the implications are. I am by no means saying radiation is good for us, I'm just saying it isn't nearly as bad as people often make it out to be
And the amount of rise in background radiation levels since man has begun the nuclear age is not a huge amount like you say, but you can believe what you want.
My point about living in Montana is that I already do live in an area of substantially higher radiation levels. Why don't you go live somewhere that background radiation is as low as possible, looks like Ireland might fit the bill for you.
I just hope I have made a few people think about these issues enough to where they go out and do their own research on it, if they do, they'll see I'm right. If they want the media to go on doing their research and presenting what they've found, so be it.
Chaz, The deaths from Chernobyl are most certainly documented. I have not read the quantity attributed by Pugsley though. The increased thyroid cancers within the exposed populations can be easily researched on Google. As per your statement regarding the complexity of radiation, I beg to differ. Did you realize that cosmic radiation is primarily Gamma radiation, with very little interaction with living tissue? Did you realize that most alpha emitting isotopes are completely harmless outside of the body, but extremely damaging within? Alpha particles are massive and cannot travel through your clothing, let alone the dead tissues of your skin. Alphas, when emitted from within living tissue are much more damaging because of their mass. Beta particles are more penetrative than alphas, but less than gammas, and their interaction with living tissue is more at the end of their trajectories, as they slow down from relativistic speeds, until they can then interact and ionize. This is just a brief introduction to the volumes devoted to radiation science; we haven't even mentioned neutrons, positrons, spontaneous fission, and other more exotic modalities of decay.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe fact of the matter is, that when the Japanese government does not release radioactive cloud plume data, and people evacuate to more radioactive regions, they have then committed murder. If one child develops cancer, the person who chose not to give out such important information has killed them.
I see what you are saying - Radiation is GOOD!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMaybe we can finally get those huge vegetables, like in 50's movies??
China is working on it. 5 weeks after Fukushima:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.good.is/post/china-s-exploding-watermelons-explained/
99.x% Water and chemical use!
(1-0.x)% Radiation effect! Not likely, but keep it in the back of your head as possible cause.
Chaz, you are obviously a troll. Good luck elsewhere.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTroll or not, He has been successful in drawing the attention towards his agenda during the time an article has the most reader attention.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis article succeeds to relay the vision of the Japanese visitors to the public and to the UN. Some fear, confusion, frustration, remaining burden and anger has come trough, but the article lacks to present a clear message to the decision makers at the safety event of the UN.
Be it stress, jet-lag, incompetence to address the media or language communication barriers or time allotment on the side of the author, we have to do without that clear message.
On speculation what would have been that message, I could for example mention:
-The Japanese People have been and still are confronted with the effects of a severe Nuclear accident, although it has not caused many deaths, it has caused long term environmental effects to our land and seas, hundred of billions of dollars in economical damages that finally have to be paid by the taxpayer.
-The Japanese people feel as such they have been misinformed by the Nuclear Industry on the subject of the safety of Nuclear installations.
-Therefore the Japanese People recommend the UN to implement rules to
--shut down and decommission all Japanese Nuclear Power Stations.
--shut down a decommission all NPS in Tsunami and Earth-quake prone areas.
--shut down all NPS temporarily and enforce strict rules that avoid ~any type of unforeseen Nuclear accident, ~tsunami or quake related nuclear accidents.
--Stop all new build and enforce stringent life-time restrictions on Global NPS.
What has the Board of the IAEA proposed in the 'IAEA Action Plan on Nuclear Safety':
-Voluntarily measures based on the lessons learned from this particular accident, to be worked out by Nuclear engineers. A country has the freedom to opt out, anytime!
-Expansion and stimulation of Countries to choose the Nuclear Path.
Besides that the Japanese government gets help to overturn the peoples persistent and justified resistance to restart all NPS.
Is the UN concerned with the well-being of people or is it an Ambassador for the Nuclear Industry ?
NB: 'Voluntarily' was a compromise made to avoid a 'Veto' from the USA UN Delegation.
I can not see it as 'the voice of the American people' so I must conclude that it is the 'Money-pocket of the the Nuclear Industry' that resulted in this 'Veto threat'
Good morning, America. It's five to twelve! Is America concerned about Nuclear Safety. It's Own safety and on Global level ?
EdH
ChazinMT : If the irradiation is no problem, why don't you go and live in Fukushima? They are looking for plenty of volunteers to sacrify themselves...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYeah, you guy's are on to me. I suppose I've spanet too much time working in a field of radiation and it's starting to get to me.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://i52.tinypic.com/2wcqsyv.jpg
[IMG]http://i52.tinypic.com/2wcqsyv.jpg[/IMG]
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisActually humans are not adapted to any more than the minimal amount of background radiation we get from our environment, or from certain foods or from acute events, such as forest fires, that we might have encountered prior to the modern anthropogenic aberrant period before 5000 ya. Of course, in no way are humans adapted to long-term ingestion of excess radiologically contaminated substances and neither are plants. Plants, which cannot move away from the sunlight (gamma and UV radiation) are better adapted to dealing with radionuclide contamination than humans; but again, the amounts are quite limited. Plants tend to shunt radionuclides into starchy tissues, pithy tissues, root starches and away from seeds, nuts and other germ tissue. However, Chernobyl and Fukushima have shown us that there are very low limits to increased background radionuclide contamination that will be toleraed by plants. Post Fukushima Cesium has been shown to become quite concentrated in pine pollen and many other plant pollens. This is aberrant and not normal. Plants, heterotrophs, are the beginning of the trophic telescoping process, first level trophs and other higher levels concentrate radionuclides in their tissues depending on what an eater's biology identifies, or usually actually misidentifies a radionuclide as resembling. For example, biological systems identify radioactive Stontium as calcium and incorporates it into the bones. Radioactive potassium ends up in the rapidly forming tissues of children's and adult thyroids, mistaken as non-radioactive iodine. Plutonium is stored in the male gonads, and bone barrow, which is why those with acute or large long-term bioaccumulative exposure to Plutonium often, if they survive, require bone marrow transplants. Many radionuclides initially destroy white blood cells. Long-term ingestion (breathing or eating) tend to produce symptoms much like AIDS and other immunosuppressive pathologic processes. Wake up. Fukushima has been fissioning en plein air for more than 500 days--three separate whole coriums. Chernobyl only did so for SEVEN days. Please see the documentary Chernobyl Heart (40 minutes, found at www.youtube.com), produced by European pediatricians to get a better idea than the ignorant popular norm about what radiologic dangers actually entail.
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