WSJ: Radiation Threat Rattles Japan's Food Chain

July 6 2011 print edition pages A1, A12

[excerpted] "We urge consumers to continue shopping as usual and retailers to do their business as usual," Agricultural Minister Michihiko Kano reassured the nation on March 31, more than two weeks after explosions at the plant first spewed radiation into the air.

"THAT ADVICE TURNED OUT TO BE MISGUIDDED. On July 8, government officials testing meat from a Tokyo slaughterhouse said they deteted levels of radioactive cesium at nearly five times Japan's limit..."

[Cesium 137 "sticks around for about 300 years"]

"The revelation has raised all kinds of questions about how much contaminated beef had already been consumed, kicking off a food scare that continues to grow asmore tainted meat is disovered.

"A Wall Street Journal examination shows serious flaws in Japan's approach to safeguarding food in the event of a nuclear accident..."

"...Last week, Naoko Koizumi, head of Japan's Food Safety Commission...said there wasn't enough data to make an assessment. "There was so little data in the literature we collected about the effects of internal exposure that we couldn't make an evaluation," Ms. Koizumi wrote in a memo attached to a July 26 preliminary report."

MAJIA HERE: The same government ineptness stemming from a desire to cover-up the terrible situation holds in the US and Canada.

Second, THERE IN FACT EXISTS CONSIDERABLE EVIDENCE ON THE EFFECTS OF INTERNAL EXPOSURE. The Japanese commission simply chose to ignore that large body of research, probably because the long-term effects in terms of birth defects and cancer are so darn scary.

EU REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE EXAMINING INTERNAL EMITTERS

http://www.cerrie.org/pdfs/cerrie_report_e-book.pdf

OTHER LINKS

http://www.cerrie.org/

http://nuclearhistory.wordpress.com/2011/04/25/committee-examining-radiation-risks-of-internal-emitters-cerrie-2001-2004/

CLOSING

Chris Busby recently called Fukushima "a disaster beyond imagining" and called for international cooperation to act concertively to solve the crisis because the ongoing fission is killing people every day

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcnwgfJfjFw