Japan crisis: nuclear workers exposed to 10,000 times more radiation than normal

[Donald Ian Rankin]

Britain's Daily Telegraph demonstrates how *not* to report on the aftermath of Japanese earthquake

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/8406408/Japan-crisis-nuclear-workers-exposed-to-10000-times-more-radiation-than-normal.html

The headline screams "Japan crisis: nuclear workers exposed to 10,000 times more radiation than normal".

Read that line again. "10,000 times higher than normal". Thats an immense amount, surely?

Well, no. But it's not until 9 paragraphs in that we find, in passing

"The three injured workers now brings to 17 the total number of workers exposed to more than 100 millisieverts of radiation at the plant, an annual exposure level considered the lowest at which any increase in cancer risk is evident."

Let's hear that again: "the lowest at which any increase in cancer risk is evident".

The Japanese are, quite rightly, taking no chances and treating the overexposure of these workers seriously, but we're not in the extra-heads-glowing-green territory that "10,000 times higher than normal" conjures up.




Then, further into the article, we get this gem.

Despite reassurances that exposure levels outside the exclusion zone are still only the equivalent of a dental X-ray even when above government safety limits, there was widespread scepticism among the public.

I just love the way they're covering their bases by mentioning in passing that this isn't actually a big deal, while simultaneously using the fact that other people think it is as an excuse to present it as such.




And then, at the very end of the article, as an afterthought:

Two weeks after the tsunami struck, the official death toll passed 10,000 yesterday with a further 17,500 listed as missing, as rescuers continue to discover bodies, some of which are being interred in mass graves despite Japan's cultural preference for cremation.

Government figures showed 660,000 households still do not have water and more than 209,000 do not have electricity, with damage now estimated at £192bn, making this the most expensive natural disaster on record.

*This* is a big deal. 10,000 people dead, 17,500 missing, hundreds of thousands of people without water and electricity is a massive catastrophe. But it's the "17 people exposed to enough radiation to cause detectable increase in risk of cancer" that gets the headline, because that's what sends shivers up people's spines.