Japan halts shipments of radioactive food, int'l community preempts risk
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The Japanese government's announcement Wednesday warning consumers not to eat leaf vegetables such as spinach and broccoli grown in and around Fukushima Prefecture due to the detection of radioactive substances, has sparked new fears in Japan and the international community as the fallout from Japan's nuclear crisis mounts daily.
Radioactive substances far exceeding legal limits have been detected in 11 types of vegetable grown near the quake-hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in northeast Japan.
Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan told the governor of Fukushima Prefecture Wednesday, home to the stricken Daiichi nuclear power plant to urge people in the region to refrain from eating vegetables such as cabbage, the "komatsuna" leaf vegetable, broccoli and cauliflower.
The advisory came as the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has been leaking radiation since it was severely damaged in the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.
And as workers battle to contain the escalating problems at the plant comprising six reactors, some of the cores of which are believed to have been at least partially melted, the latest installment of the catastrophe saw Japan's Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry announcing Wednesday that consumers should avoid eating potentially contaminated vegetables grown near the faltering power plant.
The advisory from the ministry came following consultations with the Nuclear Safety Commission of Japan and the ministry said on Wednesday that the vegetables should not be consumed "for the time being."
However, the National Federation of Agricultural Cooperative Associations halted shipments of potentially contaminated produce on Monday, to minimize health risks, but concerns have been raised about produce already shipped from contaminated regions before Monday and certainly prior to Wednesday's order to halt shipments.
Afterthought
"Today we've learnt that 11 vegetables from farming regions in and around Fukushima Prefecture have been contaminated with radioactive iodine 131 and cesium 137 and in one case a vegetable known as "kukitatena" was found to have cesium at levels 160 times more than the legal limit," Hideyuki Tadakoro, senior professor of Life Sciences and Bioengineering at Tsukuba University, Tsukuba City, told Xinhua
"Of course the government's been overloaded with a colossal earthquake, tsunami and now a nuclear crisis, but the lessons learnt from the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 regarding contaminated food leading to cancers, particularly thyroid cancer, should've meant that the whole agricultural sector in the northeast region should've been corralled," he said.
Tadakoro went on to say that effective risk management prioritizes both immediate, short and long-term causalities and as focus shifted from rescue, to relief and the nuclear crisis in the quake-hit regions, airborne radiation risks should have been considered with equal gravitas as risks to the land and sea.
While Japan's top government spokesperson Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano maintains that the levels of radiation detected in the vegetables poses no immediate risk to human health, he also noted that the radioactive readings on vegetable samples in the region have been going up and Japan finds itself in unchartered waters in issuing a restriction on food intake in line with a special law for dealing with the nuclear disaster.
"The situation at the (Fukushima) power plant is still volatile and far from under control," Tadakoro said.
"As such, maximum efforts should be made to contain the problem, even if this means extending restrictions on food that are beyond international protocol," he said.
"The halting of milk and parsley on Monday baffled me as I though this would have been done as soon as radiation around the plant was detected to have exceeded normal levels, but now we're seeing the restrictions gradually widen as the crisis dictates, rather than preventative measures."
"Advisories have only just been given to surrounding prefectures like Ibaraki to halt shipments of produce, yet radiation has been leaking in the area for almost two weeks," said Tadakoro.
