![]() The effect can only be measured statistically by, for example, comparing the number of cancer cases per 100,000 people in a place like Fukushima with a different part of Japan. On the other hand, in the same way that climate scientists admit that an individual typhoon or hurricane cannot be attributed to the effects of climate change, there is no means to determine whether individual cases of cancer in Fukushima or elsewhere are directly caused by radiation exposure. “A fatal cancer can originate from a single radioactive emission,” she said. ![]() She also notes – as do most nuclear scientists – that while more exposure to radiation carries a larger risk to human health, there is no absolutely “safe” minimum level. “But the females in the youngest age group got twice as much.” It’s not that radiation is safe for them,” she said, referring to a long-term study done on survivors of Hiroshima. While she notes that scientific research on the issue remains underfunded and incomplete, there is evidence suggesting that women may also be more susceptible to cancers caused by radiation than men. Mary Olson, the founder of the US-based Gender + Radiation Impact Project, points out that the concerns of a young mother like Iida are not misplaced. “As long as you have that level of contamination in an uncontrolled environment – the forests, the hills, the riverbanks, the farmland – you cannot say the situation is under control from a radiological perspective,” he said. The non-profit organisation offers free thyroid examinations for children from the Fukushima area A doctor conducts a thyroid examination at the Iwaki Citizen’s Radiation Measurement Center – TARACHINE in Iwaki town. Like many other observers, Burnie dismisses claims that the Fukushima crisis is “under control” (as former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe declared as long ago as 2013). “The level of contamination is such that if these radiation levels were found in a laboratory inside a controlled nuclear facility, it would require intervention from at least the plant management, and it would have to be closed off and decontaminated,” he said. Shaun Burnie, a senior nuclear specialist for Greenpeace Germany, says that even now radiation levels in many parts of the former exclusion zones remain uncomfortably high. While the past 10 years has not seen a significant spike of cancers among Fukushima’s population or other obvious signs of radiation-linked diseases – in contrast to Chernobyl which released 10 times more radiation – experts caution that there remains ample ground for concern as exposure accumulates over time. “Our children have to be the main focus for the future of everything here,” she said. ![]() Iida, a young mother who lives in the coastal city of Iwaki, about 40 kilometres (24 miles) from the destroyed plant, told Al Jazeera English that she tries to protect her children by sourcing foods from faraway regions of Japan, by finding playgrounds with the lowest levels of radioactivity and by having her children screened each year for signs of thyroid cancer. Iida is a spokesperson for a group called NPO Mothers’ Radiation Lab Fukushima Tarachine, a grassroots organisation established by residents after the disaster to protect the health and livelihoods of children living in the area who had been exposed to radiation and other potential sources of harm. But there are still nearly 37,000 people listed as Fukushima evacuees and many of them say they have no intention of going back. The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station seen from the air two weeks after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami ĭecontamination efforts have meant most areas have been reopened and people allowed to return to their homes. Nearly 165,000 residents were evacuated at its peak in 2012. In the wake of the nuclear accident, the government ordered people in nearby cities to leave, and established radiation exclusion zones around the plant. “Buildings could be repaired after the earthquake and tsunami,” said NGO worker Ayumi Iida. Nearly 20,000 people in the country’s northeast lost their lives.Ī decade later, most Japanese in the Tohoku region have been able to move on with their lives, but in the areas near Fukushima Daiichi, where radioactive particles contaminated the land, recovery has not been so swift. Memories of that March day 10 years ago remain fresh for those who experienced it.Ī magnitude 9.0 earthquake off Japan’s northeastern coast – the strongest ever recorded – was followed first by an enormous tsunami and then by the meltdown of three nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant that was built on the coast and destroyed by the power of the wave. The effects of the Fukushima nuclear accident will be felt for decades into the future, say local and international activists on the 10th anniversary of Japan’s triple disaster of March 2011, contradicting the Japanese government’s official narrative that the crisis has largely been overcome.
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