The US embassy in Tokyo has issued a Warden Message for US residents living in Japan. It recommends that those living within 50 miles of the Fukushima power plant either leave or stay indoors if “departure is not practical.”
I once lived in Kawagoe, in Saitama Prefecture, about 130 miles from the nuclear power plant that began melting down as a result of the March eleventh earthquake followed by a tsunami. Authorities agree that anyone who lives outside a 50-mile radius of Fukushima, where the reactor is located, need not worry. I’m pretty sure I’d be worried if I still lived there.
Despite the assurances, the embassy is authorizing what it calls “voluntary departure” for the eligible family members of civilian and Department of Defense non-essential employees in what looks to be most of Japan. The message states that in arranging for the voluntary exodus, the agency is exercising an “abundance of caution.” Implicit in the message is the fact that essential employees will be happier if their loved ones are elsewhere.
The embassy has also taken the step of distributing Potassium Iodide to government employees and their families, to be swallowed only under instructions from the embassy. The pill helps to prevent thyroid cancer from radioactive Iodine in the air, water or vegetation. All US citizens are advised to acquire some, just in case.
I’m trying to understand what the dangers really are. I know I shouldn’t worry, because our Nuclear Regulatory Commission, The World Health Organization and the Japanese government all say not to. I’d like to believe what they say, but then I remember that we gained much of our knowledge at home, through the atmospheric and underground testing of nuclear weapons. Americans were not given a warning; in fact, no effort to examine the health consequences were made until congress ordered a study in 1983.
I can’t help thinking of Terry Tempest Williams’ memoir, Refuge: An Unnatural History of Time and Place. The women in Williams’ family all have breast cancer. Turns out they lived near a nuclear testing site. Williams remembers seeing the gorgeous orange glow of detonation as a child, from a car window.
I thought I’d do a little independent research, but the information is difficult to understand. For example, the safety of drinking water is determined by measuring the becquerels of radioactive Iodine. When I looked up becquerele, I learned that it’s a unit of measurement of radioactivity, equal to one disintegration per second, whatever that means. Then there are millisieverts, the standard radiation measurement unit and rads, yet another way of measuring radiation.
Today’s Japan Times advises pregnant and nursing women, and children under one not to drink public water in Tokyo, which now has over 100 becquerels of Iodine- 131; the rest of us are okay up to 300 becquerels, supposedly. Eleven different vegetables from farms near the explosion have been found to contain ten times the acceptable level of radiation. The US has stopped importing all vegetable fruit and dairy products from the contaminated areas of Japan, and other countries are testing too.
I hope the authorities have it right. I’d hate to think that the Japanese might end up suffering more than they already have. One thing’s for sure: I wouldn’t want to have to depend on the veracity of government institutions.
