Japan riled by WHO's Fukushima cancer warning

[wtmusic]

Not because the WHO underestimated the effects - because they were overestimated. Seems people living there are less concerned than trust fund brats working for Greenpeace thousands of miles away...



"Japan on Friday insisted warnings by the World Health Organisation of a rise in the risk of cancer for people in Fukushima were overblown, saying the agency was unnecessarily stoking fears.

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"Their calculations were made based on the assumption that people continued living inside the evacuation zone and ate banned food. But there are no such people," a ministry official said.

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Norio Kanno, mayor of Iitate, a village from which residents have been evacuated because of elevated levels of radiation, expressed frustration. "It's utterly hypothetical," Kanno said in an interview with Japan's national broadcaster NHK. "I'm not seeking underestimation, but I'm very angry at seeing the (WHO) raising fears by overestimating data," Kanno said."

http://www.ndtv.com/article/world/japan-riled-by-who-s-fukushima-cancer-warning-337035

[Tempest]

1. Rising doubts about Japan's official radiation figures

Today, most people outside the northeastern areas of Japan directly affected by the nuclear fallout are going about their lives as if the crisis were over. Yet some volunteer groups are conducting out their own monitoring efforts and sharing the data on websites.

"We believe it is dangerous for people still living in highly contaminated areas," said Hajime Matsukubo, a spokesman for the Tokyo-based Citizens' Nuclear Information Center (CNIC). He points to independent studies indicating that people in Fukushima and Koriyama – cities well beyond the exclusion zone imposed by the government – are still exposed to high levels of radioactivity.

http://www.dw.de/rising-doubts-about-japans-official-radiation-figures/a-16631709

[wtmusic]

4. Just how are doubts "rising" if...

"Today, most people outside the northeastern areas of Japan directly affected by the nuclear fallout are going about their lives as if the crisis were over."

?

[Tempest]

6. It helps if you read the article. n/t

[wtmusic]

7. Meh.

Ignorant antinukes are everywhere. Even in Japan.

Fukushima Farmers return to the land

[Buzz Clik]

2. Is the italicized comment yours, wtmusic?

[wtmusic]

3. You don't think they're worthy of NDTV?

Yes, they're mine.

[Tempest]

5. Not worthy of any news organization worth its salt. n/t

[Buzz Clik]

9. I spend a lot of time at DU unraveling sarcasm from insanity, irony from unintentional irony.

Leaving Greenpeace out of it (I disagree with your assessment, but that's for another day), you seem to be saying that the WHO is misguided. WHO is saying that a lot of people are going to get sick, and the Japanese officials are saying to ignore it.

You seem to be siding with the Japanese assessment that WHO is out to lunch. Am I right, or am I still struggling with the decoding?

[wtmusic]

10. And I spend too much time trying to be clever.

WHO reported that if you stayed in the two worst areas of the prefecture for a year and you were a female infant, you would have a 1.25% lifetime chance of getting thyroid cancer instead of .75%.

That's an accurate assessment, and an increased chance of cancer is nothing to ignore. However:

1) No one - not infant nor adult - stayed in the most contaminated areas.
2) Thyroid cancer has a 97% cure rate.

So after antinukes attacked the WHO for saying they're sugarcoating radiation effects at Fukushima, the locals - the people who have to live there - say they're overdoing it. Call me callous, but it's much fucking ado about nothing - and the Japanese apparently agree with me. I'm not communicating with antinukes much anymore because while they're kept awake by the prospect of a remote desert mountain leaking half a million years from now, the planet is burning up. We need nuclear to help cut carbon drastically or we're FUBAR. Antinukes just need counseling and medication.

Re: Greenpeace, I'm generally supportive but they're wrong about nuclear and don't have the guts to admit it for fear of losing their cult funding (except for their founder, ironically).

[kristopher]

8. Is that supposed to be representative of "Japan"?

Or is it just more propagandizing by the agents of Abe's Conservative government as they dedicate themselves to getting around the clearly expressed will of the people.

As to Greenpeace's view of the WHO...

Toxic link: the WHO and the IAEA
A 50-year-old agreement with the IAEA has effectively gagged the WHO from telling the truth about the health risks of radiation

Oliver Tickell
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 28 May 2009 03.00 EDT
Jump to comments (…)
Fifty years ago, on 28 May 1959, the World Health Organisation's assembly voted into force an obscure but important agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency – the United Nations "Atoms for Peace" organisation, founded just two years before in 1957. The effect of this agreement has been to give the IAEA an effective veto on any actions by the WHO that relate in any way to nuclear power – and so prevent the WHO from playing its proper role in investigating and warning of the dangers of nuclear radiation on human health.

The WHO's objective is to promote "the attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level of health", while the IAEA's mission is to "accelerate and enlarge the contribution of atomic energy to peace, health and prosperity throughout the world". Although best known for its work to restrict nuclear proliferation, the IAEA's main role has been to promote the interests of the nuclear power industry worldwide, and it has used the agreement to suppress the growing body of scientific information on the real health risks of nuclear radiation.

Under the agreement, whenever either organisation wants to do anything in which the other may have an interest, it "shall consult the other with a view to adjusting the matter by mutual agreement". The two agencies must "keep each other fully informed concerning all projected activities and all programs of work which may be of interest to both parties". And in the realm of statistics – a key area in the epidemiology of nuclear risk – the two undertake "to consult with each other on the most efficient use of information, resources, and technical personnel in the field of statistics and in regard to all statistical projects dealing with matters of common interest".

The language appears to be evenhanded, but the effect has been one-sided. For example, investigations into the health impacts of the Chernobyl nuclear accident in Ukraine on 26 April 1986 have been effectively taken over by IAEA and dissenting information has been suppressed. The health effects of the accident were the subject of two major conferences, in Geneva in 1995, and in Kiev in 2001. But the full proceedings of those conferences remain unpublished – despite claims to the contrary by a senior WHO spokesman reported in Le Monde Diplomatique.

Meanwhile...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/may/28/who-nuclear-power-chernobyl