DisastersDifficult decisions for Japanese living near Fukushima

Japanese residents living just outside the twelve mile evacuation zone of the Fukushima Daiichi power plant have struggled with their daily lives as the plant has continues to spew radiation.

While Japanese officials have said that the radiation levels outside the evacuation zone are not high enough to cause observable health risks, many residents and scientists are still worried as radiation is still several times above the normal level.

The nuclear accident at Chernobyl released a far larger burst of radiation in 1986, but the event only lasted ten days. In contrast, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant has continued to leak radiation for nearly two months.

Experts acknowledge their limited understanding of the health risks for long term exposure to low doses of radiation has made it difficult for scientists and policy makers to come to an agreement on what levels of radiation are safe and what areas need to be evacuated.

The debate became more tense after a government advisor on nuclear safety recently quit in an effort to push the Education Ministry to lower the acceptable radiation dose of twenty millisieverts per year, that the government has set for elementary and junior high schools in affected areas.

Critics of the policy cite the fact that radiation doses of twenty millisieverts per year is the upper limit that International Commission on Radiological Protection has set for inhabited areas after a nuclear accident and because young children are more susceptible to radiation, twenty millisieverts is too high.

Government officials responded to these claims by insisting that radiation levels were still far too low to pose any health risks. They added that radiation levels will continue to drop over the next two months as iodine 13, which has a short half-life, will quickly break down.

Despite these assurances from government officials, schools near the power plant were not convinced and have taken steps to minimize radiation exposure.

For instance, the city of Koriyama, thirty-five miles from the nuclear plant, has detected radiation doses above twenty millisieverts at many of its schools. To minimize the risk to school children, the city plans to change the topsoil at fifteen elementary schools and thirteen kindergartens.

Some schools have even banned children from playing outside or forced them to wear hats and surgical masks when on playgrounds.

According to Gen Suzuki, a nuclear expert at Japan’s International University of Health and Welfare, the Japanese government has not issued a wider evacuation radius because Japan is a small nation with little room to spare. Any additional evacuations would strain an already crowded nation struggling to provide basic needs to those displaced by the earthquake and tsunami.

Suzuki said, “Fleeing is simply not an option.”

He added, “The debate now should not be whether 10 millisieverts is safer than 20, but what steps we should be taking to decrease radiation levels.”

Suzuki went on to say that the health risks associated with low doses of radiation are not as high as some people believe, but admits that there is a lack of scientific evidence to prove that.

The most comprehensive studies to date on low dose radiation exposure come from data obtained by researchers studying the survivors of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Shigenobu Nagataki, the former chairman of the Radiation Effects Research Foundation, which studied the victims of the two nuclear bombs, said that following the bombs there was clear evidence that high doses of radiation led to increased rates of cancer, but long term exposure to low doses were more difficult to track.

Researchers estimated what levels of radiation each survivor was exposed to and then observed them for years until they died, recording the cause of death and comparing it to populations that were not exposed to radiation.

According to Nagataki, a radiation dose of twenty millisieverts would increase the rate of cancer deaths by far less than one percent.

In addition, Nagataki said that further evacuations were not necessary and would actually prove to be more harmful as it would expose an even larger number of people to the growing problems of emergency shelters like the spread of contagious diseases and depression.

The nuclear accident in Japan has no historical reference and with little scientific evidence, scientists and policy makers are left with little information to make difficult decisions.

“This is an unprecedented situation, to which none of our textbooks apply. Decisions are being made now that will have a huge impact on Japan’s future,” Nagataki said.