High radioactive detections in land, sea and air are met with media derision and mass denial
News & Analysis
- Readings from multiple private and government sources over past three years indicate Fukushima radiation in the US
- YouTube Fukushima sleuths doing what government won’t trigger massive denial and mockery from LA Times, Al Jazeera America, Heal the Bay, others
- Sources for media meltdown deniers, such as oceanographer Kim Martini, demonstrate exuberant ignorance about radiation and health
- New report finds evidence of Fukushima radioactivity in Santa Cruz seawater
- Soil in California’s Humboldt County, famed for marijuana production, tests high for Fukushima radiation as well
Multiple hazardous readings of suspected Fukushima radiation have been detected in air, rain, snow, and surf in California and across the nation. The high radioactivity findings came during tests of air across America, Pacific Ocean surf south of San Francisco and Santa Cruz, rain in Death Valley and nearby Las Vegas, and in the soil of California’s marijuana-growing heartland in Humboldt County.
The radioactivity has been detected by EnviroReporter.com, its associated radiation stations, the Environmental Protection Agency’s RadNet monitoring posts, and YouTube users across the globe. Some of the hottest tests were videotaped and seen by thousands including one going viral and reaching over 770,000 YouTube viewers. The hot Humboldt dirt was discovered by an outspoken amateur Fukushima radiation sleuth.
The alarming detections show that the threat from the ongoing Fukushima Japan triple meltdowns may be arriving in force. The worst single environmental disaster in history is the most logical source for the myriad positive tests for radioactivity based on EnviroReporter.com‘s extensive investigation of the meltdowns that has resulted in over 5,436 samples and assessments across the country.
Many of those assessments have been done by Dale Ramicone who operates Radiation Station Glendale California which has a 24/7 live feed showing radiation readings along with a graph to put it in perspective.
“You know, this massive release, is so huge that it’s probably everywhere now,” Ramicone says. “I suspect that all you have to do is take samples, all up and down the coast, anywhere, and you will find contamination. It will be on the beach, in the salt spray, in the mussels and clams, the fish, everything that grows bones, shells, or exoskeletons. It may take some sensitive equipment to find it, but it’s there, I have no doubt.”
Ramicone is right. The Sea of Fuku Goo has arrived by land, sea and air just as EnviroReporter.com predicted not long after the poorly situated reactors were slammed by a 30-foot high tsunami after the Great Japan Earthquake March 11, 2011. Yet even with the destruction of much of the nuclear complex being three years ago today, the disaster has steadily worsened.
As anti-nuker Harvey Wasserman’s recent 50 Reasons to Fear the Worst from Fukushima details, events past and current illuminate the nuclear folly and foresee a grim future where Fukushima is concerned.
Indeed, nuclear reactor disasters of this sort get worse as time goes by, continually pumping poisonous radiation into the environment. No one even knows where the molten reactor cores are, located let alone what to do about them. All the while, 441 tons of highly radioactive water sluices into the Pacific every day.
News of Japan’s ongoing nuclear nightmare has become harder to come by since its lower house of Parliament passed a draconian Japanese censorship law passed in late November, 2013. Journalists who publish “inappropriately” or “wrongfully” obtained information on Fukushima face up to five years in prison. Inappropriate reporting, attempted leaks, solicitation and complicity are also illegal according to the new state secrecy act.
No need to censor most U.S. reporters to keep the lid on Fukushima. American media has reacted to these latest radiation revelations by issuing a barrage of poorly written screeds designed to discredit the people doing the actual detection work abandoned by the government in late 2011. Even once-august media outlets like the Los Angeles Times and newer media concerns like Al Jazeera America have been long on hyperbole but short on facts. This third year anniversary of the worst nuclear reactor meltdowns ever has also given us the worst ever government and media coverage of an environmental disaster.
Information obtained by EnviroReporter.com shows that the Fukushima radiation is already impacting California in ways that may crash the fishing industry, destroy coastal real estate values, poison the Golden State’s famed pot and irradiate the San Joaquin Valley breadbasket of the nation.
Does that make Fukushima the “perfect crime?”
Stephan Timmermans’s 2006 book Postmortem: how medical examiners explain suspicious deaths posits that a crime can’t be perfect if it is indeed identified as a crime. So far, Fukushima fits this description because most of the victims, human and animal alike, don’t even know what has been happening since March 11, 2011. So it’s perfect in this regard.
Amazingly, a small group of people exists who do know what’s happening and have the ability to document evidence of it and share it on a grand scale. They are armed with nuclear radiation monitors and cell phone cameras.
The challenge is daunting for these nuclear Paul Reveres who aim to warn the country of imminent disaster. The third anniversary of Fukushima reveals that the forces allayed against them are almost insurmountable.
Almost.
Flying the Fissile Skies
Recent high air, rain and snow radiation findings were detected in California, Michigan, Illinois and across nine states in a commercial jet since late last year. EnviroReporter.com has discovered that the storm that brought highly radioactive rain to Death Valley in November also slammed Las Vegas with radioactive precipitation.
Radiation readings by EnviroReporter.com revealed that flying the skies over America remains abundantly radioactive. On a December 23 flight from Los Angeles to Chicago, this reporter measured radiation at 922.1 Counts Per Minute (CPM) using an Inspector Alert. This reading was taken at the cruising altitude of 37,000 feet and was nearly 24 times the background measured in the terminal at Los Angeles International Airport.
According to documentation obtained by EnviroReporter.com, the California Highway Patrol considers any material or situation over three times background to be the triggering level for a hazardous materials incident. Of course, at high altitudes the radiation is elevated as the atmosphere thins. Nevertheless, this reporter wore a face mask to reduce radiation inhalation caused by continuously falling out and being re-suspended radiation from the triple meltdowns.
The radiation detected en route to Chicago was lower than the readings detected in late 2011 on a flight along the same flight path nine months after the meltdowns had begun. That December 23, 2011 reading at 38,000 feet registered 1,238 CPM.
Similarly, the radiation readings of southwest Michigan snow were lower this year. A December 26, 2012 kilo of snow radiated 24.1 percent above background compared to measurements of 15.3 percent and 19.6 percent above background in late December 2013 snowfalls.
Chicago snowfall measured 43.0 percent above background January 5, 2014 prior to departing back to LAX the next day before an Arctic cold front brought temperatures down to 26 degrees below zero Fahrenheit January 7.
Passing over Monument Valley at 30,000 feet, this reporter’s Inspector Alert absorbed 625 CPM, over triple what the guide says is normal. S.E. International’s basics were written prior to Fukushima nuclear fiasco.
Death Valley’s Fukushima Rains
The Inspector Alert nuclear radiation monitor used on this winter testing sojourn was donated to EnviroReporter.com by International Medcom, the Sebastopol California-based manufacturer. The company provided the instrument after seeing the shocking readings detected in Death Valley in November where rain radiation readings in the national park came in dozens of times background over several days.
Unlike the latest Michigan snow readings somewhat above background, Death Valley snow from the November 2013 storm Boreas registered at background or below. Inexplicably, the same Boreas rain lit up the Inspector Alert with a startling 26.7 times background November 22, 2013 at Badwater and 31.5 times normal at Furnace Creek, the national park’s headquarters.
These rains weren’t blazing hot because of naturally occurring radon progeny. That had been washed out long before the readings took place in the multi-day rain event. Rain tested the next day at Stovepipe Wells in the center of the park at a whopping 29.7 times background in a test performed by EnviroReporter.com entirely on camera to fully explain the testing technique and to verify the result for any skeptical viewers.
The first inkling that Fukushima radiation was raining down on Death Valley came two days before when the first Stovepipe Wells sampling came in at 7.0 times normal. During this exceptional three-day storm, nearby Las Vegas was hit with the same Boreas rain. High radiation activity during this period was evident at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency radiation station in Las Vegas.
Coast to Coast
An EnviroReporter.com analysis reveals that there have been massive beta radiation surges in cities from coast to coast since last autumn. The levels of air radiation have been many times what is considered relatively safe. Even dry regions of the country got a stiff dose not normally associated with those areas.
With no other obvious sources than the WIPP radiation leaks in southwest New Mexico, the Fukushima meltdowns again come to the fore as the prime suspect. There is no doubt that this unnatural and unexplained radiation is here and it is hot. In some cases, really hot.
EPA’s RadNet monitors have been organized for easy use by EnviroReporter.com readers because accessing EPA’s beta data can be cumbersome. The result is RadNet Air Monitoring.
Beta radiation is of particular concern because of its manmade origins. Lethal radionuclides like cesium-134, cesium-137, strontium-90 and plutonium 239-240 have been released in unrelenting massive quantities since the triple meltdowns began. Without the EPA beta stations functioning, the country is blind to the threat because it can’t detect it.
It isn’t wise to be blind when on Beta Watch. Yet that is exactly what America is unless the information is being cut off at the source perhaps because it shows such extremes. EPA did not respond to past requests for comment on the inoperative radiation stations.
Even with a fraction of RadNet working, it still is invaluable and certainly more accurate and functional as a nationwide radiation monitoring system than any for-profit private systems available. An EnviroReporter.com analysis reveals that there have been massive beta radiation surges in cities from coast to coast over the last few months.
To determine what exactly a radiation surge is depends on a variety of factors. The most common tripwire is the multiple of three times background for the alert level. This yields a value of approximately 100 CPM on the detector determining when the readings have gone into ‘alert’ level.
The Inspector Alert sets its alarm default to 100 CPM as do several private radiation networks based in the United States. The presumption is 100 CPM is 2.5 times a typical background of 40 CPM. This alert level is conservative because much of the nation has much lower background levels. Before Fukushima, for example, San Francisco’s background was usually between 12 to 15 CPM.
Through thousands of interior and exterior tests, Radiation Station Santa Monica‘s background was determined to be between 42 to 46 CPM outside and 35 to 40 CPM inside. The U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency in 2007 had a “Recommended Decontamination Decision Criteria for Individuals When Using Selected Portable Instrument/Detector Combinations” of 300 CPM. This high standard, ignored by the actual people in the field or laboratory using these nuclear radiation monitors, is triple what triggers a Haz-Mat emergency for the CHP.
Readings all over the country have far exceeded these standards. Vast swaths of America have become hot zones.
Southern California has not been immune to the higher readings. Normally registering near background, Los Angeles hit 350 CPM October 27 and topped off at 190 CPM January 4 with all readings in between jumping around significantly above background. This belies the assumption that precipitation is needed to bring radiation to ground. Currently, however, L.A.’s readings seem to be the result of a malfunctioning detector.
Inland 54 miles, the city of Riverside hit 460 CPM January 10. Down the coast, San Diego had a beta radiation concentration over 350 CPM just before Christmas.
Moving into even drier climes, Phoenix, Arizona saw 650 CPM January 7 and Albuquerque, New Mexico blew through 1,000 CPM three days before New Year’s Eve. Four days before its beta monitoring ceased working December 9, Denver charged up over 1,000 CPM. Salt Lake City, Utah topped off at 330 CPM November 18.
Texas has consistently had some of the highest radiation readings in the country. Fort Worth endured nearly five times the hazardous alert level with a December 18 high of 460 CPM. Dallas registered 300 CPM December 21 and Amarillo blew through 1,000 CPM a week later. Recent high detections in the Texas Panhandle may be partly a result of the WIPP nuclear waste dump fire in upwind New Mexico.
High RadNet beta readings were felt in the Midwest as well. St. Paul, Minnesota saw 320 CPM January 12 and Madison, Wisconsin was hit with 300 CPM the day before. Grand Rapids, Michigan had over double the alert level January 10 with 225 counts per minute after hitting 310 CPM December 4.
Not even the South escaped the radiation brought to it from Fukushima on the jet stream in addition to recirculated fallout from re-suspended dust and sea spray. Charleston, West Virginia, pre-chemical catastrophe, was already having a bad day December 29 with a beta blast humming in at 440 CPM. Tallahassee, Florida posted a huge 715 CPM January 23.
There is hope, however, in dealing with the threat. EnviroReporter.com‘s advice on how to mitigate against excessive radiation includes how to eat and drink including the most comprehensive online Radiation Food Lab in the world. Common sense dictates that children and pregnant women stay out of radiation rains that exceed 100 CPM.
The Glowden State
Californians also have access to this online news organization’s affiliated Radiation Stations in East Los Angeles, Glendale, Hemet, Pacifica, Santa Monica, Simi Valley and Ventura California. Radiation Station Pacifica California has precipitated over 770,000 YouTube views alone since December 24 when station operator David Crain uploaded Fukushima radiation hits San Francisco? (Dec 2013).
Despite several technical errors, the retired Yahoo executive and restaurateur managed to capture what seems to be the glow of the inexorable flow of the Sea of Fuku Goo sloshing down the coast of the Golden State. Crain’s viral video, and subsequent tests by the surfer and others who descended on the coast, suggest that California’s nickname should be the Glowden State.
“Not good news!” Crain wrote EnviroReporter.com and others via email December 21. “I have been taking readings around Pacifica, in airplanes, Colorado trips, etc. for over two years now. Thursday I went to a beach I frequent.”
Crain was visiting Surfer’s Beach which is several miles south of Pacifica which is down the coast from San Francisco. The popular Half Moon Bay beach is hundreds of miles south of where the Kuroshio Current hits North America and splits into two currents that run north to the Gulf of Alaska and south along the Northwest coast down along to as far as Baja California, Mexico.
“The background radiation counts (CPM) average 25-35 around Pacifica,” Crain continued. “I have fewer readings from Surfer’s Beach but they were close to levels in Pacifica. As I stepped out on the sand about 25 yards from the water’s edge, my alarm on the detector started to beep. I have never had my detector go into alarm before. I went back Friday morning and took more readings. See below. The alarm is set to 99 CPM, roughly x 3 over background. A HazMat situation is assumed present when counts go x 3 and higher.”
Crain’s nuclear radiation monitor topped out at 156 CPM. The subsequent explosion of his YouTube video brought on a tide of other people seeing if they could detect radiation at the water’s edge. Another would-be radiation investigator descended on Esplanade beach in Pacifica January 2 and proceeded to lay his Geiger counter on the same kind of black sand that seemed to be the source of radiation that Crain had found.
“This area is at Esplanade beach, in North Pacifica, appx. 150-200 yards North of stairs,” wrote YouTube poster FrostyFjords wrote in his video description. “Readings were well above 800 counts per minute! Yikes!”
Yikes indeed. Instead of testing for Fukushima radiation, Crain and FrostyFjords were testing sand that appears to have been radiating natural radium and thorium according to a subsequent test of the Surfer’s Beach sand by Inspector Alert’s manufacturer, International Medcom CEO Dan Sythe. Crain was using an Inspector Alert in his viral video.
He was also using incorrectly if he wanted to detect possible Fukushima radiation in the Pacific Ocean. Crain should have been taking measurements of the water, not the sand. In addition, he should have been establishing a database of Pacific water readings to help confirm a range of normal background readings ever since he first contacted EnviroReporter.com about establishing a radiation station May 6, 2012.
It could be argued on Crain’s behalf that testing the ocean water isn’t as easy as it seems because water is a nature block of ionizing radiation resulting in sometimes skewered readings that are too low. Filtering the water is one way around this problem. Regardless, the huge Death Valley radiation rain detections demonstrated that testing water can yield some spectacular results.
YouTube poster FrostyFjords also is shown committing a serious error by putting his Geiger counter directly on the radioactive sand. This can contaminate a nuclear radiation monitor rendering it useless.
Another way to assess sea water was explained in the February 20, 2012 EnviroReporter.com feature exposé Beta Watch. The report documented several British radiation surveys that gauged radioactivity in the Irish Sea mist floating up to 124 miles inland in Wales. In one study, muslin fabric was stretched on frames at various distances from the seashore to capture radioactive spray.
Shaky Science Pushback
Perhaps just as disturbing, the government and a hapless media unfamiliar with radiation science are attempting to fob off the latest bad radiation news as anything but something caused by Fukushima. In response to the Crain video’s viral spread, the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) rose up to refute the Fukushima connection before even testing the beach.
“The Department recently responded to reports of elevated radioactivity readings on California’s beaches in the vicinity of Half Moon Bay, south along the coast from San Francisco,” CDPH said in a statement. “Preliminary data compiled by the Department indicates the elevated radioactivity is due to naturally occurring radioactive materials (NORM), not Fukushima related activities.”
Perhaps the CDPH was measuring the same thorium and radium-rich sand Crain was. If so, it would have made the same mistake not seeing the ocean for the waves. It would also fit in to calming concerned communities along the coast south of San Francisco.
Keeping people calm about radiation readings taken as plain as day and shown on YouTube to hundreds of thousands isn’t easy. But with the huge stakes at play with currents contaminated with Fukushima radiation flowing down the coast, government agencies are going out of their way to help propagandize their way out of the obvious.
However the radioactivity arrived on the beach that Crain has been monitoring for over two years, one thing is for certain, much of the nuclear industry, state and federal government agencies, academia and media have been brought together to cast doubt on massive detections of radiation as have been coming from Japan.
A Harvard presentation by Kenji Tateiwa, manager of the Nuclear Power Programs at the Washington DC office of Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), revealed as much in a presentation December 3, 2013 in Cambridge.
Distrusted by the Japanese people and its own government which stepped in to assume ‘control’ at the stricken plant last year, TEPCO’s plan to handle the American people is far reaching and unprecedented.
Joining in this effort are state and federal entities like CDPH, Department of Energy, Nuclear Regulatory Commission and even the EPA. Nuclear powerhouses Exelon, Westinghouse and Diablo Canyon nuclear power-plant owner Pacific Gas and Electric are also spreading the TEPCO word according to Tateiwa. Even Harvard, MIT and the National Academy of Sciences have united in “disseminating lessons” about the meltdowns.
Media Meltdown Deniers
TEPCO must surely have been pleased at the snarky and dismissive media that reported on Crain’s radiation findings. Southern California legacy media and some online media commentators decided to decliare Crain’s anonymous video and the reaction to it as just pure fear-mongering. In the process, the coverage showed just has facile and science-challenged the press has become in light of Fukushima’s inexorable onslaught in the Pacific.
The newspaper compounded its errors by saying that “even at its worst” eating cesium-134 (Cs-134) and cesium-137 (Cs-137) contaminated blue fin tuna was like “eating bananas.” This is false.
Bananas contain slightly radioactive potassium-40 (K-40). Humans need K-40 and no matter how many bananas one eats, the body keeps the K-40 at a regular threshold. It doesn’t concentrate in particular organs because of the body’s homeostatic mechanism for regulating K-40. Potassium-40 doesn’t present a threat to the human body for another reason: it has a half-life of 1.248×109 years or about 1.25 billion years.
A half-life is the time necessary for a radioactive substance to drop to half its mass. The shorter the half-life means the more ferocious the ionization is which can damage the DNA of cells and cause oft-times fatal cancer.
Cs-137 and strontium-90 have much shorter half-lives than K-40, 30.17 years and 28.79 years respectively. The half-life of Cs-134 is only 2.07 years so for it to show up anywhere, such as in blue fin tuna caught off a San Diego pier in August 2011, just five months after the meltdowns began, can only be attributed to Fukushima and not fallout from nuclear bomb tests decades ago.
Unlike K-40 in bananas, Cs-137 does concentrate in organs sometimes as much as one hundred times the amount of K-40. “[I]nternal exposure to Cs-137, through ingestion or inhalation, allows the radioactive material to be distributed in the soft tissues, especially muscle tissue, exposing these tissues to the beta particles and gamma radiation and increasing cancer risk,” according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention toxicology brief.
Cesium-137 harms children more than adults even in tiny amounts. Children near Chernobyl in the Ukraine suffered cardiovascular disease showing signs of heart pain, faint heart sounds, systolic murmur on auscultation and heart failure as a result of the 1986 meltdown. Heart disease and cancer are the leading cause of death amongst children in neighboring Belarus.
Female hormones are also seriously imbalanced by Cs-137 which is a primary cause of infertility. Cs-137 exposure will lead to a prolonged gestation, increased newborn delivery complications and developmental disorders. There is no safe level of Cs-137 in food or drink.
Yet the Los Angeles Times would have its declining readership believe that this fearsome Fukushima radioisotope is as benign as bananas. The fruity fission fib has been a common ruse used to negate high radiation readings by nuclear power allies since nuclear power began.
A snarky style dominated the Los Angeles Times piece that attempted to demean even when at odds with the facts.
“Every single environmental issue was being blamed on Fukushima,” Kim Martini told the paper January 12. “And I thought there’s no way that can be true.”
Martini’s was right. It wasn’t true because what she said wasn’t true. The LA Times reporter should have known that her blanket statement was patently false on the face of it. Instead the paper elaborate on her University of Washington oceanographer background as if that field translates into Fukushima radiation dispersion expertise.
The paper also noted, by way of establishing Martini’s credentials, her contributions to Deep Sea News (DSN). Martini’s November 28 DSN story True facts about Ocean Radiation and the Fukushima Disaster set the tone for the current tide of vocal meltdown deniers. Instead of attempting a sound science appraisal of the triple meltdowns’ threat to the Pacific and North America, the reader is treated to a jokey tautological title and ‘exposé’ filled with more holes than a Fukushima reactor.
Martini, who lives in an Alaskan yurt and says “her goal in life is throw expensive s**t into the ocean,” got her wish in the piece – so-called facts drown in Martini’s sarcasm. She claimed that the “radioactive rods in the Fukushima power plant are usually cooled by seawater” which is, of course, wrong. Fresh water was used to cool the rods before the nuclear reactors were destroyed by the earthquake and tsunami.
There are so many mistakes in her piece that there are strikeouts and corrections throughout. Some statements imply that Martini and her editors don’t understand the very basics of radiation exposure. “Like I said before, the West Coast will probably not see more than 20 Bq/m3 of radiation,” Martini wrote. “Radiation will increase in the Pacific, but it’s at most 10 times higher than previous levels, not thousands.”
The implications of anything over three times background radiation are huge, let alone 10. Ten times is over three times the CHP’s hazmat trigger. Martini is clearly unaware of the significance of what’s she’s saying.
Martini’s mixes snide fact mangling with incredulous statements like “most fish are kinda lazy” to imply local supplies are safe since most fish don’t migrate to Japan and back to North American waters like blue fin tuna do.
“It’s not even dangerous to swim off the coast of Fukushima,” Martini wrote apparently unaware that over 400 metric tons of highly radioactive water have been gushing into the waters off of Fukushima for over two years. “Hell, the radiation was so small even immediately after the accident scientists did not wear any special equipment to handle the seawater samples (but they did wear detectors just in case). If you want danger, you’re better off licking the dial on an old-school glow in the dark watch.”
That is perhaps the singularly dumbest thing said about Fukushima in the last three years. But how would any normal L.A. Times reader know that?
No meltdown denier screed is complete without the bananas comparison. “You’ll get the same amount of radiation by eating 9 bananas,” Martini summed up in her DSN opus. “Monkeys might be doomed, but you are not.”
The Los Angeles Times article that pushed Martini as its sage expert also looked to Heal the Bay which, according to the paper, had “fielded such a swell of alarmist calls, emails and Facebook inquires that its staff posted an online Q&A.” Note that the callers weren’t alarmed, they were alarmist. That means, according to the ‘paper of record’ in Southern California, that to even be concerned that Fukushima radiation was affecting marine life, the fish we eat or the Pacific was to be not only a fool, but a dangerous one at that.
Also note that like Martini, Heal the Bay betrays its ignorance of the most basic fundamentals of how Fukushima radiation has and will continue to impact the east Pacific along the West Coast.
“It takes years for seawater plumes from Japan to reach U.S. shores,” Heal the Bay says in its “Mythbusting: The Latest from Fukushima.”
The notion that it would take the plume years to reach us would appear to be a myth in the making itself. That’s not how the Kuroshio Current works according to the United States Navy’s Office of Naval Research.
“Two of the largest currents are the Antarctic Circumpolar Current and the Kuroshio Current,” the research branch writes in Ocean in Motion: Currents – Characteristics. “The Kuroshio Current, which is located just off Japan’s coast, travels up to 75 miles a day at a speed of up to 3 miles per hour.”
The Navy map of the Kuroshio Current shows it splitting along the West Coast with the southern-bound California Current making its way down the coast to Southern California before turning back west along Baja California. Fukushima is 5,363 miles up current from Los Angeles.
Even adding on extra miles since the water doesn’t flow straight to Southern California, a 6,000-mile long journey from the radioactive shores of Fukushima to the beaches of Malibu takes less than three months, not years.
Another myth perpetuated by Heal the Bay was that something was actually being done specifically to monitor for Fukushima fallout in the air, rain, snow and Pacific.
“Three major federal agencies are currently monitoring radiation from the Fukushima disaster,” Heal the Bays claims, “The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is monitoring marine debris and atmospheric dispersion of radioactive particles; the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) is monitoring air and water for radiation that is harmful to human health; and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is monitoring Japanese imports to insure food safety. These agencies work closely together to monitor radiation leveling in the United States as well as our imported goods.”
Heal the Bay is wrong on all counts: NOAA isn’t testing the water for radionuclides and the EPA is generally testing with its RadNet data with nothing specific to Fukushima, let alone any warnings when the beta readings zoom north of 100 CPM. The FDA’s monitoring of food in general, let alone Japanese imports, is woefully undermanned and underfunded. Actual responsibility for monitoring, investigating, sampling and analyzing radiation from Japan is non-existent on both the state and federal levels.
Why does it matter that Heal the Bay is wrong on how long Fukushima infused water takes to get here? Or that it is unaware of how there’s no ongoing state or federal government testing? Because the group is giving out false information under the guise of being expert in the subject. Still, Heal the Bay trumpets its own brand of sloppy science.
“There is a great deal of inaccurate information floating around the Internet about Fukushima radiation and its impacts to human and marine life,” Heal the Bay concludes in its ‘mythbusting’ page. “We recommend double-checking your news sources for credibility, and when in doubt, check out how Heal the Bay is keeping up to date on the most recent news and scientific studies on the Fukushima disaster.”
Heal the Bay wouldn’t know how to deal with its “healthy oceans” under constant siege by Fukushima if it drowned in one of them. No matter to the Los Angeles Times. Heal the Bay and oceanographer Kim Martini have enough ‘credibility’ to blow this dangerous nonsense past the paper. Not just past the writer but his editors too. Any digging would have revealed to the Times what you’ve just read here.
Naturally, the Los Angeles Times Fukushima-denier article was picked up for “curated” aggregation by LA Observed. “With anyone who uses Facebook exposed to bogus but viral hype about supposed high radiation levels, public officials and scientists have put out the word that for them the evidence is in,” a blog post read January 12, 2014. “Things are still dicey to be sure at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power — and likely to get worse before they get better. But that’s a separate question from whether Pacific fish are being seriously contaminated, and the threat of impact here is yet another separate issue.”
A blogger for LA Weekly, which this reporter freelanced for from 1986 to 2012, referred to Santa Monica rain which EnviroReporter.com tested at over five times background in April 2012 as “acid rain” in a blog post covering what we had discovered. When this reporter objected and asked that the word “acid” be removed because it wasn’t accurate or that I would have to correct the mistake in the post’s comments, the blogger became defensive.
“I think there’s a popular perception about acid rain simply being toxic rain, but I’ll change it,” he responded. “I fixed your niggles. It’s the last time I’m picking anything up from you though, given your threats.”
Threats? Asking for a stupid mistake to be corrected is a threat coming from someone he knew for years from mutually contributing to the now defunct Los Angeles CityBeat? He stayed true to his word, though, and nothing critical of the Fukushima fiasco and its impact here has come out of the ever-thinning paper since. The once vaunted LA Weekly now investigates stories like broken parking meters.
Perhaps the blogger, who had previously won a Pulitzer Prize no less with a team of reporters at the Los Angeles Times, should be given some slack considering the shape of science knowledge in the United States at large. In short, the country is as dumb as a stump when it comes to all things scientific.
A National Science Foundation survey of 2,200 Americans released in early February found that 26 percent of those surveyed incorrectly answered the question “Does the Earth go around the Sun, or does the Sun go around the Earth.” The same survey found that only 48 percent thought that human beings “developed from earlier species of animals.”
Results from a 2012 Program for International Student Assessment showed this race to the bottom is nothing new and getting worse. U.S. students fell behind 29 nations and jurisdictions worldwide in mathematics, falling six slots from 23 just three years prior. Science acumen had American pupils placed behind 22 other education systems in the 2012 survey.
Even mountains of money thrown at American kids’ educations refuse to budge their rankings. Spending more than most countries on our students, about $115,000 per pupil, hasn’t amounted to much. Slovak kids perform at the same level as American ones with a per student expenditure of around $53,000 per pupil (which is less than half for any arithmetically challenged American reading this).
Soboroff showed Hill a newly purchased Geiger counter which was reading background outside the medical school and asked if it was anything to be worried about. “It would need to be showing tens of thousands of them,” Dr. Hill said. “It would be 10,000 instead of 0.1.”
Tens of thousands of times background is something to be concerned about when the California Highway Patrol considers three times background a hazmat situation? Preposterous isn’t strong enough a word to describe Hill’s hogwash.
It isn’t easily discernable which is more terrifying – a medical doctor who believes this rubbish or one that teaches it to future medical doctors. One can only wonder how many patients have and will get too much radiation from USC’s glowing school of radiobiology graduates.
Hill is not alone in his hooey. University of California Berkeley nuclear physics professor Kai Vetter went even further in Fukushima denial when interviewed by San Francisco’s CBS affiliate station KPIX-5 January 31. When asked about Radiation Station Pacifica California‘s David Crain and his use of an Inspector nuclear radiation monitor, Vetter blew off any remote possibility that such advanced Geiger counters work.
“A Geiger counter is not good enough,” said Vetter. “Not good enough at all.”
Vetter was not done. “We still see Cesium 137 back from the atmospheric tests in the 40s and 50s,” Vetter said. “We still see that. It’s, in a way, part of our natural background now.”
So now one of the fiercest manmade radionuclides is part of our “natural” background radiation? Is that like murder being part a “natural” cause of death because it is so common? Following Vetter’s logic, the answer is yes. And, once again, UC Berkeley has outdone USC but not in a good way. Perhaps most shocking is that Hill and Vetter didn’t think anybody would notice that what they were saying was untrue.
Meltdown denying maven Kim Martini, upon whose shoddy pronouncements so much of this hyperbolic media nonsense has been based was right in one thing: a widely distributed cover story artwork of a Ventura County Reporter feature as fear-stoking fallaciousness. The article was written by this reporter, who had nothing to do with the cover art selected to accompany it.
Martini had VC Reporter dead to rights. When this reporter saw the massive mistake, I knew that the Fukushima deniers would have a field day with it.
“The last feature was damaged due to the incorrect use of an earthquake shockwave map on the cover to represent what?” I subsequently wrote to the managing editor. “I don’t know. Fukushima contamination certainly did not and does not flow like the illustration. I repeatedly have had to explain that it was not my mistake, but the paper’s, as it angered a number of my readers.”
This wasn’t the last inadvertent sabotaging of this reporter’s work through art or editing. And I was not alone. These ‘own goals’ were a far cry from when the paper ran stories that changed Southern California history, like Rocketdyne Ranch in 2002. The decision to no longer write for publications that mistakenly damage my work was not an easy one. This reporter has had a long and fruitful experience with print media and wants it to survive and thrive.
Newspapers aren’t the only medium in which legacy media has either ignored or fumbled the Fukushima story. Al Jazeera America, which used the VC Reporter cover as its major art in a January 8 story, went on its own meltdowns denier spree subsequently with Debunking Fukushima’s radiation myths which featured a photoshopped giant mutant squid on a beach. AJA‘s piece was typical of the kind of false information being spun by an apparently clueless media.
“The first thing that people don’t realize is that radiation is natural,” AJA quoted Malcolm Crick, secretary of the UN’s Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, in the piece. “We are exposed to radiation from outer space… that radiation is there, it provides us with a background exposure as we live on this planet.”
So the cesium-137, strontium-90 and plutonium 239/240 are natural? AJA doesn’t even ask. Nor does AJA question Crick’s assertion of Fukushima that “there were no radiation-related deaths or acute diseases among the general public and workers.”
Crick is clearly wrong according to numerous Japanese and international reports. A recent report in the Japanese publication Asahi Shimbun reported December 12, 2013 that 59 young people in the Fukushima prefecture had been diagnosed with or are suspected of having thyroid cancer. All of the thyroid cases were in people younger than 18 when the triple meltdowns began March 11, 2011. That the cancers developed so soon after the disaster started is somewhat of a mystery to scientists but that didn’t prevent Toshihide Tsuda, a professor of epidemiology at Okayama University from expressing alarm.
“The rate at which children in Fukushima prefecture have developed thyroid cancer can be called frequent, because it is several times to several tens of times higher,” he told the newspaper.
One of the first peer-reviewed studies to link Fukushima with American deaths was released by the International Journal of Health Services (IJHS) in January 2012. The study was authored by epidemiologist Joseph Mangano, executive director of the Radiation and Public Health Project, and Janette Sherman, an adjunct professor and toxicologist at the University of Michigan. It found that deaths rose in 122 American cities after the meltdowns began, “Projecting these figures for the entire United States yields 13,983 total deaths and 822 infant deaths in excess of the expected.”
Popular conspiracy Internet radio host Jeff Rense began a rumor last October 28 that this reporter had been threatened and had disappeared probably due to outspoken Fukushima coverage. Nothing of the sort happened, which I had made clear to him.
The story got so twisted that regular program guest Yoichi Shimatsu speculated that my disappearance coincided with the U.S. Department of Energy’s impending deal with Vietnam for nuclear reactors which may be something I might have to do with.
The bogus threat rumor ripped through the Internet in large part because of comments made on the most trafficked news aggregator on the Fukushima crisis, Enenews.com. Claiming over two million visitors a month, Enenews also publishes thousands of comments, including ones about this reporter’s apparent demise.
“I read some comments on ENENEWS that you and a few others have not been heard from for some time now and it was raising some suspicion about your safety,” wrote “Sunnie” from St. Louis in an email to EnviroReporter.com January 29. “I took it to another level, as I have been noticing some ‘untimely’ deaths, etc amongst some Fukushima ‘insiders’ and have been keeping an eye on the situation. I was fearful that you and your wife, Denise, might be among them.”
These kinds of comments on Enenews perpetuated the myth that this reporter and his editor had to hide from some unseen wholly fictional threat. A news organization that has been threatened and hides is not the reality or image EnviroReporter.com wants its readers to have of it. We cover serious subjects and scurrilous chatter perpetuated on the largest Fukushima disaster news aggregator can be harmful.
Enenews, which calls itself a “news outlet,” has no easily identified publisher. The website was registered as a Florida limited liability company by a Palm City attorney named Grant N. Grand July 1, 2011. Grant N. Grand is also the registrant for FLORIDAOILSPILLLAW.COM which says it is “Documenting the BP/Deepwater Horizon Oil, Gas, & Dispersant Disaster.”
Grand was sued for copyright infringement July 15, 2010 for allegedly posting a May 10, 2010 Las Vegas Review-Journal story, “Exxon Valdez oil risks spur warning for gulf cleanup crews” by R-J staffer Keith Rogers on his own website in its entirety. The headline changed to “Exxon Valdez foreman: ‘Oil is 1,000 times more toxic than we thought’” and the byline to “OILFLORIDA.”
Las Vegas-based Righthaven LLC bought the rights to the R-J article July 7, 2010 and sued Grand a week later. “Rather than requesting websites remove R-J stories before filing lawsuits, Righthaven typically sues the websites and seeks $75,000 in damages for copyright infringement,” a July 16, 2010 Review-Journal article revealed. According to VegasInc in “Righthaven files, settles more copyright lawsuits” October 13, 2010, Righthaven had reached a confidential settlement with Grand.
It has not damaged our ability to report news, including exposés regarding Fukushima’s impact on the Pacific and North America that is seen nowhere else. There is no other news website in the world that has the breadth of original radiation testing, monitoring and reporting that EnviroReporter.com has. Phony rumors and aggregators are mere sideshows to the hot news that, unfortunately, just keeps coming.
That is little consolation to Radiation Station Pacifica California’s David Crain for the thrashing he has taken over his viral video, which has been seen by over 770,062 viewers as of March 10. “The video I made and shared and then got picked up then went nuts was my first attempt and perhaps my last” Crain told EnviroReporter.com January 6. “I now would have done it differently, more like you have done, perhaps. You can’t deny the results. It’s in the universe. This has never happened to me before nor have I ever posted anything on YouTube.”
Whatever faults can be attributed to Crain’s somewhat misguided beach testing, they were not repeated by Michael E. Boyd of Soquel, California, as EnviroReporter.com has discovered. Boyd posted Implications of radioactivity in seawater to desalination in Santa Cruz County California January 11 and the results are amazing.
Boyd took multiple radiation measurements at Capitola Beach in Monterey Bay January 9 just 67 miles down the coast, and down current, from where Crain made his now infamous video at Pacifica State Beach. The same day, the Santa Cruz Sentinel ran with a story called “State rebuffs radiation concerns at beach.”
Equipped with a GMC200 Geiger Muller nuclear radiation monitor with software for USB data logging, Boyd looked for where Fukushima radiation would actually be, the Pacific Ocean. “The sea water sample taken at the tide line from high turbidity tide water was examined in comparison to a sample taken from [a] reverse osmosis filtration system in my home,” Boyd wrote. “The tap water is supplied by the Soquel Creek Water District.”
Boyd also detected huge radiation readings in the mists generated by the churning surf. He is not mystified, however, as to the source of the hot sea spray. “Fukushima Japan’s TEPCO nuclear power plant melting down must be the cause of higher radiation levels on the Pacific seashore, not the government compelled speech on the subject, that natural sources are the cause, as reported by the media,” Boyd concluded in the report. “Irrespective, the fact remains that radiation levels are elevate[d], what ever the cause.”
The Sea of Fuku Goo has arrived in Monterey Bay, home of one of the richest marine habitats in the world. It is sloshing southward along the California Current to Los Angeles and beyond to Baja California before curving back along a westward current across the Pacific to reload up on Fuku goo.
The implications of such a radioactive environment extend beyond the state’s shoreline. Some of the priciest real estate in the world is along the California coast, worth hundreds of billions of dollars in a state with over $4.4 trillion worth of property. If and when radiation sleuths, including EnviroReporter.com, detect these astronomical readings, videotape them, and post the hot shots online, will wealthy residents along the Southern California coast take notice? Most rich folks aren’t stupid and the thought of breathing in Fukushima radionuclides at such high levels day in and day out might not appeal to many of them.
The hottest property in the Golden State could become, literally, the hottest property courtesy of a triple meltdown begun exactly three years ago with no end in sight. Whether this causes a massive real estate crash is still to be seen. More than one wealthy homeowner along the Pacific has told EnviroReporter.com that they are unloading their multi-million dollar properties while the market is on the upswing.
Hot Pot
EnviroReporter.com has also learned that soil in the most marijuana-intensive growing region of California is hot with radionuclides that could have come from nowhere but Fukushima. The implications are enormous as marijuana is California’s largest agricultural product. Plus, it is inhaled deeply with users holding their breath as long as possible to absorb the psychoactive components of cannabis.
Amateur radiation sleuth Michael Van Broekhoven gathered two soil samples from near Willow Creek and from “commercially available top soil in Northern California.” Both samples, collected in April 2013, tested positive for cesium-134 and cesium-137.
That the samples contained cesium-134 is proof that the radiation came from Fukushima as Cs-134 has a half-life of 2.0652 years meaning it couldn’t have been fallout from atomic weapons fallout. Nor is there an active nuclear reactor in the area leaking radiation that could have been the source.
The Willow Creek soil sample had 0.962 Becquerels per kilogram (Bq/kg) of cesium-134 and 13.39 Bq/kg of cesium-137 according to the lab gamma spectroscopy analysis done for Van Broekhoven in May 2013 by Cinnaminson, New Jersey-headquartered EMSL Analytical, Inc.. The store-bought dirt had even more Cs-134 with 1.11 Bq/kq though less Cs-137 at 4.10 Bq/kg.
Super strong strains of the pot are sold in Los Angeles for nearly $300 an ounce and have names like “Gucci OG” and “King Louie XIII.” Indoor grows use the commercially available top soil in Northern California that Van Broekhoven bought to test to raise potent plants as well. Now, both indoor and outdoor Humboldt County dope could have been grown in Fukushima-contaminated dirt.
This alarming revelation means that the twelfth-largest economy in the world, California, has its number one product being grown in potentially lethal soil. The marijuana industry in California was worth $13.8 billion according to public policy analyst Jon Gettman in 2006. Gettman holds a Ph.D. in public policy from George Mason University where his doctoral studies were focused on regional economic development. His report is one of the few that tackle the hard to discern production figures and value of the product.
The worth of the California’s annual marijuana crop could cost double that now according to EnviroReporter.com sources. Even the 2006 pot crop worth dwarf’s the 2012 value of California’s second most valuable commodity, milk, which was valued at $6.9 billion by the California Department of Food and Agriculture.
The meltdown misery doesn’t end in California. The state’s San Joaquin Valley’s $105.81 billion produce industry packs and ships to everywhere in the country. Common sense would suggest that with high radiation along the California coast down as far as Santa Cruz, and hot radiation rains in Death Valley, that there would be evidence of unnaturally high radiation somewhere in between. There is. An approximate line between the two places goes through the central valley city of Fresno which has had incredibly high beta radiation detections.
Facing Fukushima
With all this evidence, then, how could it be the perfect crime? Well, it isn’t.
Even with public apathy, an asleep at the switch government, and a hostile media, David Crain’s video going viral shows that hot radiation gets hits. People will watch videos showing Fukushima’s invisible fingers tightening around the throat of the West Coast. A lot of people. No matter the amount of media derision, seeing is believing.
Dale Ramicone is ready for that day and already has the right equipment. He and other dutiful Americans will also continue to monitor for Fukushima radiation because they know it’s the right thing to do. That doesn’t mean he sees much chance of people rising to the challenge of facing Fukushima.
“The cost will come little by little,” Ramicone says. “Men, women, children will have their lives impacted over the coming decades. More cases of leukemia, thyroid cancer, an insidious poisoning that leaches into our bodies. Our lives will be shortened, health slowly sapped from an entire population.
“The truth will be hidden, of course. Denials will come from every corner. It will be easy, since no one will really look. If no one looks, no one knows, and of course, there will never be an official acknowledgment. No headlines blaring “Two Decades, 20,000 dead!” No accounting, so no one is accountable. It’s perfect, a perfect crime, don’t you think?”
Almost.
As long as there are people and reporters willing to tease out and find Fukushima radiation in America and beyond, there is hope that a sober facing up to the radioactive reality is possible.
Over 500 of such souls gathered on a San Francisco beach October 19, 2013 using themselves to spell out FUKUSHIMA is HERE.
Since the miseries of Japan’s triple meltdowns won’t end anytime soon, perhaps for hundreds if not thousands of years, intrepid and brave individuals and groups have plenty of time to expose the continuing radioactive nightmare of Fukushima.
@zach: Apparently you’re a student from St Michael’s Grammar School, an Australian co-educational independent day school located in St Kilda, Victoria that costs tens of thousands of dollars a year to attend. I’m afraid that while that tony education has taught you how to construct poorly-punctuated sentences, it also did not impart the critical thinking skill set that would have enabled you to see that the “perfect crime” that this article exposes had nothing to do with your prattle here. Give it another read.
A perfect crime? why would japan do this to try and harm a few americans when it killed thousands of their own, cost them hundreds of billions of dollars and even made large parts of their own country uninhabitable due to radiation?
I think you have to be pretty big headed to believe that japan decided to do that to attempt to harm a couple of americans in such a far fetched way.
Start having some sympathy for the Japanese who had their lives ripped apart by the disaster.
@All: The U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works sent EnviroReporter.com the following regarding progress, or shockingly no progress, done to make more safe America’s nuclear power plants and infrastructure. Having just finished Fukushima – The Perfect Crime? will probably have our readers not very surprised at what the outstanding, yet sadly outgoing, junior Senator from California has to say:
Opening Statement of Ranking Member Barbara Boxer
EPW Hearing on “Oversight of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission”
October 7, 2015
(Remarks as prepared for delivery)
Today, the Environment and Public Works Committee is holding an oversight hearing on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). I remain concerned about the slow pace at which the NRC is implementing measures intended to protect American nuclear plants in the wake of the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdowns that occurred in Japan in March 2011.
It has been more than four years since the Fukushima disaster, and Japan continues to face challenges in its cleanup efforts.
Only one of Japan’s 43 nuclear reactors has been turned back on since the Fukushima disaster. A recent analysis by Reuters found that of the other 42 operable nuclear reactors in Japan, only seven are likely to be turned on in the next few years. Reuters also found that “nine reactors are unlikely to ever restart and that the fate of the remaining 26 looks uncertain.”
For the last four years, I have been saying that in order to earn the confidence of the public, we must learn from the Fukushima disaster and do everything we can to avoid similar disasters here in the U.S.
Following the last NRC oversight hearing in April, I met with Chairman Burns to discuss the commission’s progress on implementation of the Fukushima Near-Term Task Force recommendations. I appreciate the letter he sent me after our meeting outlining the status of the commission’s work and anticipated timelines for completing each of the recommendations.
While I recognize that progress has been made on some of the recommendations of the Post-Fukushima Task Force, I am frustrated and disappointed with the overall slow pace. Not one of the 12 task force recommendations has been fully implemented. And many of the recommendations still have no timeline for action.
I am also concerned with some of the decisions the NRC is making on whether to implement important safety enhancements.
In particular, I am troubled that the Commission overruled staff safety recommendations and voted not to move forward with multiple safety improvements. For example, by a 3 to 1 vote, the Commission decided to remove a requirement that nuclear plants have procedures in place for dealing with severe accidents, like the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. These procedures ensure plans are in place when multiple failures of safety equipment occur or other unanticipated events take place.
This requirement was identified in the aftermath of Fukushima, but after years of work on this and other proposals, the Commission simply chose not to move forward. That is unacceptable.
The Commission does not appear to be doing all it can to live up to the NRC’s mission “to ensure the safe use of radioactive materials for beneficial civilian purposes while protecting people and the environment.”
We need to look no further than the two nuclear power plants in my home state. At California’s Diablo Canyon Power Plant, NRC has repeatedly declared the plant safe even after learning of a strong earthquake fault near the plant.
At the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in San Diego County, which has been closed permanently, the NRC recently issued exemptions to emergency planning requirements. The plant’s operator will no longer be required to maintain detailed plans for the evacuation, sheltering, and medical treatment of people residing in the 10-mile zone around the plant.
I am aware that the NRC is planning a rulemaking on decommissioning issues, but rubber stamping exemptions the way the Commission has is the wrong approach. I believe it is wrong to relax emergency planning requirements with thousands of tons of extremely radioactive spent fuel remaining at the site. The millions of people living in close proximity to the plant deserve better.
The NRC owes it to the citizens of California and the nation to make safety the highest priority and I urge all the Commissioners to refocus your efforts to do just that.
I look forward to discussing these issues with you today.
It should be mandatory that dispensaries test ‘medicinal’ marijuana for the presence of radiation now-along with pesticides, fungicides, etc. Wise up folks and quit smoking it.
@Eric: While it may be understandable to advocate such an extreme act, that would be terrorism which is unacceptable. Plus, there is no way to diminish the tons of goo at Fukushima by exploding the place sky high – radiation can’t be vaporized away, blown apart or scattered enough to be safe. It would make the massive mess even more unmanageable and deadly to flora and fauna on the land and in the sea.
Nuke the reactors. It would do less harm to the environment and oceans
Very good investigative factual journalism.
With regard to mainstream media’s coverage, it appears OPERATION MOCKINGBIRD is exerting it’s full force on this grave issue. For those who are not familiar, OPERATION MOCKINGBIRD was covertly implemented by the CIA soon after the agency was formed after WWII, for the purpose of infiltrating mainstream media and using it as a propaganda tool to promote their many covert agendas. Even though it was ordered by Congress to cease it during the late 1970s, it obviously was not done, and no oversight exists. Sensitive subjects which hit close to home, such as real investigations into murdered presidents, govt involvement in drug traffic, 911 and other false flag operations that factually implicate the true holders of power, will trigger the CIA’s mocking propaganda machine into high gear. And like paid stooges, the mainstream media falls in line with a synchronized goose step. And innocent victims be damned.
Anti-nuclear legend Harvey Wasserman has Michael Collins on as his guest to discuss Fukushima – The Perfect Crime? in this fast-paced show with a host who really knows his radiation. Collins describes radiation discovered along the Pacific coast in Pacifica and Santa Cruz, California, Fukushima-tainted dirt lab tested from the heart of marijuana growing country in Humboldt County, extremely radioactive rain in Death Valley, high radiation found through US EPA RadNet monitors coast to coast, meltdown deniers successfully pulling the wool over the Los Angeles Times, news aggregators and “alternative” news outlets, and the now-infamous Ventura County Reporter cover art for one of Collins’s 2012 Fukushima stories that shows how clueless the media, and Americans in general, are about the ongoing triple meltdowns that began in Fukushima Japan March 11, 2011. Not to be missed rarity.
This IS the perfect crime, because our stooge governments are allowing TEPCO to get away with it.
Specifically, I like how the Japanese Government has taken to explaining the skyrocketing thyroid cancer rates in Fukushima Prefecture — “it’s because we’re testing more thoroughly, not because there are more cancers.”
Yeah, right. If the Japanese Gov’t wasn’t lying its ass off, it would repeat the Fukushima study somewhere out of the immediate fallout zone, and then compare. Please don’t bet on that happening.
You can read some of the sordid details here: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/09/fukushima-children-debate-thyroid-cancer-japan-disaster-nuclear-radiation
It’s about time for a bunch of nuke plant employees to show up and mansplain to us that “hardly any radiation was released, nukes are safe, even YOU eat bananas, and …” because we’re all just supposed to believe all the nuke industry’s bullshit.
There is an amazingly concerted effort going on to trivialize Fukushima. As recently as this week, the Japanese government was explaining away the skyrocketing childhood thyroid cancer rates in Fukushima Prefecture as “we’re doing a better job detecting, that’s all.”
“Ignore this situation at your peril.”
That’s a phrase I’ve heard far too often in my life, as to a variety of economic and public health disasters. With respect to radiation from Fukushima reaching the United States, the warning is appropriate.
In 1986, few Americans had ever heard of Ukraine, when the Chernobyl nuclear power plant explosion and meltdown occurred. Whether out of Soviet egotism and pride, or out of fear of intense public anger and its consequences, the highest levels of the Soviet government made decisions to work in near silence (in terms of what the Soviet public knew) to attempt to staunch the continued atmospheric impacts of the explosion and meltdown. Moscow and Leningrad were far from the accident site, the bureaucrats and decision makers’ children were thought to be relatively safe, and catastrophic decisions were made. The residents of Pripyat, the town nearest the reactor, were not evacuated until 2 days after the explosion. Ukrainians living within 20 miles of the reactor were not evacuated until a month later, while Belarussians living in that 20 mile zone were not evacuated at all. The rest of the Soviet population was not aggressively educated on how best to protect themselves from becoming chronically ill from the variety of sources contaminated by the fall out from the burning reactor.
Literally hundreds of thousands of “Soviet citizens” of no consequence, Belarussians living to the north, Russians living in Bryansk Oblast of Russia to the northeast, and Ukrainians living to the east, west and south of Chernobyl were exposed first to airborne radiation from the explosion and fire, then to radiation in their drinking water drawn from the region’s surface waters, and then to radiation in the meat they ate and milk they drank because animal forage had been radioactively contaminated. Belarussians and Ukrainians were also extensively exposed from radioactive contamination of locally grown grain which went into their every day foods. The Soviet government found it inconvenient to try to prevent the public from unknowingly eating radioactively contaminated food (a situation which continues in Belarus today with particular intensity).
Over the succeeding years, the people living in those regions saw a dramatic increase in cancer and related health problems to such an extent that the people now call it “Chornobyl disease”. Birth defects substantially increased. Children died with more frequency than in other eastern European countries. Individual medical doctors in southwest Russia, Belarus and Ukraine began to undertake independent investigations of the effects of radiation on the health of the people. Those physicians wrote about their findings in medical journals published in the Russian and Ukrainian languages. In autopsies of the region’s dead children their organs were examined and Caesium-137 was found in its highest accumulation in the endocrine glands, in particular the thyroid, the adrenals and the pancreas. High levels were also found in the heart, the thymus and the spleen. The average person-on-the-street in the region now takes for granted the fact that their countrymen are still chronically sick and dying from the radiation.
The Belarussian, Ukrainian and southwest Russians have historically been chronically fatalistic, knowing that “Life stinks then you die” (a translation of a sentiment expressed in both languages.) As a consequence, the public at large in those countries knows and understands the “consequences of the Chernobyl explosion and fire” from practical experience and they soldier on.
Yet there were at least 7 non-Soviet organizations with “western” orientation which conducted public health studies in the region. All of those studies were met with criticism that Chernobyl related illnesses and deaths were under-reported or over-reported. Each study seemed directed toward a particular political goal.
In 2007 three physicians who lived in southwest Russia and Belarus put together of collection of articles on the medical effects of the Chernobyl explosion which had been written in the Russian language by practicing physicians and medical school professors. The book was simply titled “Chornobyl”.
By 2009, the New York Academy of Sciences had sponsored the publication of an English translation of that Russian language book, called “Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment”. The publication was little noticed until 2011, when its contents began to be discussed as a result of the Fukushima meltdowns and radioactivity releases. A shit storm about the English translation publication ensued, with some “western” scientists and statisticians vociferously attacking the report out of a belief that eastern Europeans are incapable of conducting “credible” medical and environmental research…a charge which Russian and Ukrainian scientists and physicians find incredibly insulting, given those countries universities’ reputation for producing brilliant academics. In the 2 years following the Fukushima meltdowns the English-language translation of “Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment” became very difficult to obtain, in essence a suppressed or black listed document.
In contrast with Belarussians, Ukrainians and southwest Russians’ of the consequences of the catastrophe for their countries populations, Americans are completely in the dark about the consequences of Fukushima. Americans have not realized that public health consequences from the Fukushima meltdowns have already begun to occur, and as a consequence Americans are not trying to improve their chances at maintaining their pre-Fukushima life expectancy or that of their children. They are far more “in the dark” than the citizens of their historical enemy, the Soviet Union.
On all manner of issues, the Obama Administration is accused of “strictly controlling the message”. The progressive media, largely pro-Democratic Party, figuratively stick their heads in the sand on the consequences of Fukushima. No one is discussing how to better the non-interventionist outcome which was and is seen in Belarus, Ukraine and southwestern Russia.
The Republican/conservative media are supportive of economic powerhouses in the U.S., like the food and real estate industries as well as those in the medical industry who profit from widespread cancer treatment. The Republican/conservative media say nothing about the affects of the Fukushima meltdowns on people and the environment in America even when presented with the Obama Administration’s inaction and lack of candor as an opportunity for unfettered “slam journalism”.
Attacks are as-to-be-expected on journalists, scientists and citizens who try to discuss what is happening in the United States with respect to the Fukushima meltdowns. So confident of their silencing of the message, TEPCO’s American advisor Dale Klein* is now seriously talking about a program of perpetually dumping the region’s fresh water, now radioactively contaminated, into the Pacific, whether neighboring countries like it or not. The corporate, political and media elite have created an oligarchy of silence, laying down a fog of fatalism blinding the American people.
* http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/mar/10/fukushima-operator-dump-contaminated-water-pacific
The radiation disaster in Fukushima has been and still is a cluster of lies that is allowing them to radiate the air and the Pacific Ocean and everything that lives in it and eats from it! TEPCO must be replaced with a group of international radiation and nuclear power plant experts to stop the leaking radiation from entering the Pacific Ocean and to clean up this ongoing disaster! The people at TEPCO that caused this disaster to happen by not securing the generators to higher ground after they were told to do so long before the earthquake hit and the people in the Japanese Government that allowed this to happen should be tried for crimes against humanity then put into prison! Now dozens of people are showing up with thyroid cancer and other cancers! Anyone that has been eating pacific ocean fish or sea food should think about doing a radiation detox.
Dang!
Amazingly well written. I am at a loss of words.
I read it twice and will probably read it again.
This one will be forwarded to my family and friends.
🙂 Good one, thanks.
“…more holes than a Fukushima reactor.”
– Michael Collins
Wow. Thank you for this. When I’ve mentioned, or made reference to the radiation contaminating here, people seem to ignore it or deny it. And some, appear to have the attitude of, we can’t do anything about it, so ignore it. I will be sharing this link.