Meanwhile some authoritative reports of radiation effects after in depth study at Fukshima. These reports are in stark contrast of endless "dead man walking" and "extreme radiation in Fukushima fish type reports. (For example see this recent story about :
Fukushima Fish With 2,500 Times The Radiation Limit Found Two Years After Nuclear Disaster
All interested parties should read authoritative reports and here are a few for the record.
From United Nations' UN Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR)
(Link: for example:
http://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/fukushima.html
There are similar reports worth reading (some links given below, but are easy to google) from WHO, and studies at MIT, Tokyo University.
From UNSCLEAR (submitted to UN General Assembly etc):
The report has also found
no observable health effects from last year's nuclear accident in Fukushima.
>>> (Some excerpts)
(The studies come from the UN Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) after five years of work. An independent body of international experts, .... They will then serve to inform all countries of the world when setting their own national radiation safety policies.
Presenting to the UN General Assembly, UNSCEAR's ....
findings were that no radiation health effects had been observed in Japan among the public, workers or children in the area of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. This is in line with studies already published by the World Health Organisation and Tokyo University that showed people near the damaged power plant received such low doses of radiation that no discernible health effect could be expected.
....
Uncertainties at low doses are such that UNSCEAR '
does not recommend multiplying low doses by large numbers of individuals to estimate numbers of radiation-induced health effects within a population exposed to incremental doses at levels equivalent to or below natural background levels.' (This is what I and a few other scientists were pointing out here again and again)
Six workers received total doses of over 250 mSv during their time tackling the emergency, while 170 received doses over 100 mSv.
None of these have shown ill effects, said UNSCEAR, stating that radiation played no role in the coincidental deaths of six Fukushima workers in the time since the accident.
... it was not possible to attribute increases in health effects across populations to long term exposure at radiation levels typical of the global average background levels (1-13 mSv per year). 'This is because of the uncertainties associated with the assessment of risks at low doses, the current absence of radiation specific biomarkers for health effects and the insufficient statistial power of epidemiological studies.'
For exposures below 100 mSv UNSCEAR said that a health issue across a population could be put down to radiation exposue on two conditions: that spontaneous occurrence of that issue was low while the radiosensitivity of that issue were very high; and that the number of cases was high enough to overcome 'the inherent statistical uncertainties'.
Last year, Japanese authorities protected children in Fukushima prefecture from iodine-131 by evacuating them before radiation was released, issuing stable iodine pills to block iodine-131, and preventing food and water containing the radioactive isotope from being consumed. As a result, the largest dose thought to have been received by a Japanese child is 35 mSv - this figure also coming from UNSCEAR's preliminary report. This is 'reassuring' in comparison to the doses received by children after the Chernobyl accident, said UNSCEAR while, "That good news must be underlined," said Argentinian delegate to UNSCEAR, Gerardo Diaz Bertolome.
The statistical chance of health effects increases through the range of 100-1000 mSv exposures, 'but there are statistical limits in calculating that risk and the population in question had to be big enough to do so.' The only radiation events on this scale, where populations of thousands have received on the order of 100 mSv, have been the atomic bomb blasts in Japan from World War II.
In general, the effects of radiation only start to become clear at 'high acute absorbed doses... such as might occur following exposures in accidents or radiotherapy', for example a dose of over 1000 mSv. Even then it is necessary to eliminate other potential causes before radiation can be unequivocably said to be the cause, said UNSCEAR.
(Please do read the report in original)
WHO report story from reuters
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/ ... IA20120523 .. Read the orginal report to see: " estimated the radiation doses that residents of Japan have received in the year following the accident at Fukushima Daiich... most Fukushima homes outside the 20 kilometre evacuation zone were comparable to reference levels for radon)...
Also interesting is this MIT study (I may have referenced it before)..
>>>
Integrated molecular analysis indicates undetectable DNA damage in mice after continuous irradiation at ~400-fold natural background radiation. ..
...These studies suggest that exposure to continuous radiation at a dose rate that is orders of magnitude higher than background does not significantly impact several key DNA damage and DNA damage responses," ..
"...It is interesting that, despite the evacuation of roughly 100,000 residents, the Japanese government was criticised for not imposing evacuations for even more people. From our studies, we would predict that the population that was left behind would not show excess DNA damage - that is something we can test using technologies recently developed in our laboratory,.
(Again please do read the whole article for context and clarity)
A new look at prolonged radiation exposure MIT study suggests that at low dose-rate, radiation poses little risk to DNA.