Study: 28% Increase In Thyroid Problems In Babies Born After Fukushima in Alaska, California, Hawaii, Oregon and Washington

Infants are much more vulnerable to radiation than adults. And see this.

However, radiation safety standards are set based on the assumption that everyone in the world is a healthy man in his 20s.

Now, a medical doctor (Janette D. Sherman, M. D.) and epidemiologist (Joseph Mangano) have released a study showing a 28% increase in thyroid problems in babies born in Hawaii and America"s West Coast after the Fukushima nuclear accident.

Janette Sherman, M.D. worked for the Atomic Energy Commission (forerunner of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission) at the University of California in Berkeley, and for the U.S. Navy Radiation Defense Laboratory in San Francisco. She served on the EPA’s advisory board for 6 years, and has been an advisor to the National Cancer Institute on breast cancer. Dr. Sherman specializes in internal medicine and toxicology with an emphasis on chemicals and nuclear radiation.

Joseph J. Mangano is a public health administrator and researcher who has studied the connection between low-dose radiation exposure and subsequent risk of diseases such as cancer and damage to newborns. He has published numerous articles and letters in medical and other journals in addition to books, including Low Level Radiation and Immune System Disorders: An Atomic Era Legacy.

Their new study – published in the Open Journal of Pediatrics – is entitled "Elevated airborne beta levels in Pacific/West Coast US States and trends in hypothyroidism among newborns after the Fukushima nuclear meltdown."

Common Dreams notes:

[The study found that] children born in Alaska, California, Hawaii, Oregon and Washington between one week and 16 weeks after the meltdown began are 28 percent more likely to suffer from congenital hypothyroidism (CH) than were kids born in those states during the same period one year earlier.

 

CH results from a build up of radioactive iodine in our thyroids and can result in stunted growth, lowered intelligence, deafness, and neurological abnormalities—though can be treated if detected early.

 

According to researchers from the Radiation and Public Health Project who performed the study, “Fukushima fallout appeared to affect all areas of the US, and was especially large in some, mostly in the western part of the nation.” They add that CH can provide an early measure to "assess any potential changes in US fetal and infant health status after Fukushima because official data was available relatively promptly."

 

Health researcher Joe Mangano similarly cautioned, "Reports of rising numbers of West Coast infants with under-active thyroid glands after Fukushima suggest that Americans may have been harmed by Fukushima fallout. Studies, especially of the youngest, must proceed immediately."

 

Earlier this year, the Fukushima Prefecture Health Management Survey found that more than 40 percent of the Japanese children studied showed evidence of thyroid abnormalities, which Wasserman says signifies a "horrifying plague."

Sherman and Mangano published an essay in June 2011 claiming that  the 35% spike in infant mortality in Northwest cities since the Fukushima meltdown might have been caused by radiation.

And they published a study in December 2011 in the peer-reviewed journal International Journal of Health Services, alleging that 14,000 people had already died in the United States due to Fukushima.   A Scientific American blog post and Med Page Today slammed the study as being voodoo science. However, Scientific American does admit:

Certainly radiation from Fukushima is dangerous, and could very well lead to negative health effects—even across the Pacific.

Zero Hedge

Study: 28% Increase In Thyroid Problems In Babies Born After Fukushima in Alaska, California, Hawaii, Oregon and Washington

Two years after Fukushima disaster, doubts of food safety linger in Japan

In Japan, people call it 3-11. It’s shorthand for the tsunami and nuclear accident two years ago. The disaster left behind devastation that may never be completely cleaned up. Tens of thousands of people still can’t go home. People are still missing. And people are still afraid of radioactive contamination. Japan’s government insists the food supply is safe. But some people have made big changes in their eating habits.

David Wagner has lived in Japan for almost 30 years. He loves Japanese food. But these days, he gets groceries at a store that sells imported foods. In the store, he says, “So I buy my granola here … and the reason I’ll take this is, it’s from Germany.”

Wagner doesn’t want to leave Japan. He’s got good work here as a business communication consultant. But after the nuclear accident, he started a Facebook page on food safety. He stopped eating mushrooms, because they absorb radiation. If he wants fish — here in the land of sushi — he mail-orders it, canned.

“I just do not eat the fish in Japan anymore,” he says. “They can’t test all the fish.”

Fish is still popular in Japanese restaurants and groceries, but uncertainty about food is widespread among the Japanese. Some people even use private testing services.

Customers come to this Tokyo shop for organic cotton towels and hand-dipped candles — and also to use the radiation detectors. There are two of them in back.

Hidetake Ishimaru set up shop here after the disaster, checking food for radiation at 3,000 yen a test — about $ 32. Samples fill a shelf: “Brown rice and soybeans, white rice … that is seaweed, I think,” he says.

The Japanese government says the country’s rice is safe to eat. But customer Yuki Yanagase is skeptical. Ishimaru translates for her: “I don’t believe it. So I’m gathering many informations from Internet.”

The Internet’s full of scientific studies and conspiracy theories about radiation — what you might expect when a danger is invisible and hard to understand. If your job is to try to explain things to the public, good luck.

Dr. Shuichiro Hayashi works on crisis management for the food safety division of the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare. Hayashi says after 3-11, Japan set such strict limits for radiation that you could eat food contaminated at that level every day and be just fine. Japan allows much less radiation in food than the U.S. or Europe.

His colleague in the Ministry of Agriculture, Mitsuhiro Doishita, says the government tested 10 million bags of rice from Fukushima in 2012, and only 71 were over the limit.

Many people told me they’re reassured by these measures. Wakako Yamane is an interpreter at an ad agency, stopping by McDonalds for coffee before work. She was worried about food right after the accident …

“Today I’m not concerned at all,” she says. “Some people are. I’m not. I just want to continue the way we’ve been living and I think we’re all right.”

This may be a case of what David Wagner calls radiation fatigue. He says you get tired of being vigilant about food. When we had lunch one day, he had a salad — something he wouldn’t have done a year ago. But he wasn’t sure he should.

“From everything I read, nobody can say definitively or non-definitively that it’s safe or not safe, and that’s what’s confusing for people like me,” he says.

Research about radiation is confusing. A new World Health Organization report on the Fukushima disaster says people are not at risk of health effects unless they were in the most contaminated areas. But the report acknowledges the limits of the research it relies on: Studies tend to look at people with higher levels of exposure — such as atomic bomb survivors. The long-term effects of low-level exposure are not as well known.

So some people figure — why take a chance? On yourself maybe, but what if you have kids?

Two-year-old Karera Tani demonstrates the English he’s learning in kindergarten. The Tani family lives in Chiba, near Tokyo. When the nuclear plant 130 miles away started spewing radiation, they fled to Osaka. They’re back now, but they buy drinking water from Hawaii. They use a grocery delivery service that tests food for radiation. Karera’s mom, Momo Tani, is a doctor. She says the high grocery bill is worth it, for her son’s health.

“Well, with things that aren’t supposed to be there like cesium, even if it’s under the limit it’s there, and you never know what the effect will be if it accumulates.”

Tani worries about the research that shows that children are particularly vulnerable to exposure to radiation. A lot of parents told me they aren’t concerned about their own diets, but they’re careful about what their kids eat. Many of them told me they feel bad for not supporting the farmers in the disaster region, but they’re buying their rice from Kyushu, far away from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

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Two years after Fukushima disaster, doubts of food safety linger in Japan