HUMAN BABIES IN CALIFORNIA ALREADY SHOWING SIGNS OF RADIATION EXPOSURE
A new study of the effects of tiny quantities of radioactive fallout from Fukushima on the health of babies born in California shows a significant excess of hypothyroidism caused by the radioactive contamination traveling 5,000 miles across the Pacific. The article will be published next week in the peer-reviewed journal Open Journal of Pediatrics. Congenital hypothyroidism is a rare but serious condition normally affecting about one child in 2,000, and one that demands clinical intervention – the growth of children suffering from the condition is affected if they are left untreated. All babies born in California are monitored at birth for Thyroid Stimulating Hormone (TSH) levels in blood, since high levels indicate hypothyroidism.
Joe Mangano and Janette Sherman of the Radiation and Public Health Project in New York, and Christopher Busby, guest researcher at Jacobs University, Bremen, examined congenital hypothyroidism (CH) rates in newborns using data obtained from the State of California over the period of the Fukushima explosions.
Their results are published in their paper Changes in confirmed plus borderline cases of congenital hypothyroidism in California as a function of environmental fallout from the Fukushima nuclear meltdown. The researchers compared data for babies exposed to radioactive Iodine-131 and born between March 17th and Dec 31st 2011 with unexposed babies born in 2011 before the exposures plus those born in 2012.
Confirmed cases of hypothyroidism, defined as those with TSH level greater than 29 units increased by 21% in the group of babies that were exposed to excess radioactive Iodine in the womb. The same group of children had a 27% increase in ‘borderline cases’.
RADIATION ALERTS ISSUED FOR MULTIPLE U.S. CITIES – NO MEDIA COVERAGE
The Nuclear Emergency Tracking Center (NETC) provides free radiation monitoring information to the public from about 300 private monitoring sites and many more government monitoring sites like “RADnet” from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In the past ten days, the Nuclear Emergency Tracking Center (NETC) has issued radiation alerts for several major U.S. cities after background radiation levels in those cities suddenly spiked to record high levels or jumped to fifty percent higher than normal in the “Counts Per Minute” (CPM) of deadly Gamma Radiation in the 600 – 800 keV range. Those Alerts are known as “RADCON – 5″ Alerts because the radiation has climbed to the highest level on the 5 step scale. Despite the issuance of RADCON-5 Alerts, no mass-media in ANY of those cities, bothered to report the condition. Cities affected were / are:
OLYMPIA, WASHINGTON
RICHLAND, WASHINGTON
RENO, NEVADA
EXPERTS: THE WORST IS YET TO COME
Beginning on Tuesday, November 26, 2013, TEPCO is to begin attempting to remove the 1,534 used fuel rods that remain inside Reactor #4. These rods contain pellets of nuclear materials like Uranium and Plutonium as well as other radioactive materials. Experts say that the fuel rods may snap during the removal process because the reactor pool is physically damaged and the rods may not be able to come out perfectly straight. In the event a rod snaps, and fuel pellets fall out from inside the rod onto the floor of the reactor pool, they could begin reacting with each other on the floor of the pool. They would become self-sustaining mini reactors, completely uncontrollable, boiling-off the pool water, thereby allowing the remaining fuel rods to overheat and meltdown and releasing tons of radioactive gases into the atmosphere. One byproduct of such a scenario would be large amounts of hydrogen gas. The temporary structure built around Reactor #4 after the earthquake, would hold enough of that hydrogen gas to make the equivalent of a nuclear explosion once the gas ignites.
Experts say that if such a scenario takes place as TEPCO is removing the remaining fuel rods, “it is bye-bye Japan and people on the west coast of the United States and Canada would have only DAYS to evacuate to avoid lethal doses of radiation.”
Strange that the mass-media inside the United States is failing to report this.
http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/mmckinzie/fukushima_radiation_risks_from.html
Fukushima Radiation Levels Will Concentrate in Pockets at Specific US and Canada West Coast Locations
500 people assembled on October 19th on Ocean Beach in San Francisco and formed the letters with their bodies to demonstrate their growing concern about eventual fallout on the west coast. Credit and More Information: FukushimaResponse.org
Experts at Canada’s Vancouver Aquarium say they are puzzled by what is causing thousands of sunflower starfish, or sea stars, to die in the waters of Vancouver Harbor and Howe Sound.
What is even more startling is the way the creatures perish — by quickly dissolving in a phenomenon the aquarium has dubbed Sea Star Wasting Syndrome.
“They have disintegrated, and now there is just goo left,” says research diver and taxonomist Donna Gibbs.
Radiation Levels Will Concentrate in Pockets at Certain West Coast Locations
An ocean current called the North Pacific Gyre is bringing Japanese radiation to the West Coast of North America:
The leg of the Gyre closest to Japan – the Kuroshio current – begins right next to Fukushima:
Replies
While many people assume that the ocean will dilute the Fukushima radiation, a previously-secret 1955 U.S. government report concluded that the ocean may not adequately dilute radiation from nuclear accidents, and there could be “pockets” and “streams” of highly-concentrated radiation.
Physicians for Social Responsibility notes:
An interesting fact for people living on the US west coast is also included in the UNSCEAR [United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation] report: only about 5% of the directly discharged radiation was deposited within a radius of 80 km from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power station. The rest was distributed in the Pacific Ocean. 3-D simulations have been carried out for the Pacific basin, showing that within 5–6 years, the emissions would reach the North American coastline, with uncertain consequences for food safety and health of the local population.
The University of Hawaii’s International Pacific Research Center created a graphic showing the projected dispersion of debris from Japan.
Last year, scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory and 3 scientists from the GEOMAR Research Center for Marine Geosciences showed that radiation on the West Coast of North America could end up being 10 times higher than in Japan:
After 10 years the concentrations become nearly homogeneous over the whole Pacific, with higher values in the east, extending along the North American coast with a maximum (~1 × 10−4) off Baja California.
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With caution given to the various idealizations (unknown actual oceanic state during release, unknown release area, no biological effects included, see section 3.4), the following conclusions may be drawn. (i) Dilution due to swift horizontal and vertical dispersion in the vicinity of the energetic Kuroshio regime leads to a rapid decrease of radioactivity levels during the first 2 years, with a decline of near-surface peak concentrations to values around 10 Bq m−3 (based on a total input of 10 PBq). The strong lateral dispersion, related to the vigorous eddy fields in the mid-latitude western Pacific, appears significantly under-estimated in the non-eddying (0.5°) model version. (ii) The subsequent pace of dilution is strongly reduced, owing to the eastward advection of the main tracer cloud towards the much less energetic areas of the central and eastern North Pacific. (iii) The magnitude of additional peak radioactivity should drop to values comparable to the pre-Fukushima levels after 6–9 years (i.e. total peak concentrations would then have declined below twice pre-Fukushima levels). (iv) By then the tracer cloud will span almost the entire North Pacific, with peak concentrations off the North American coast an order-of-magnitude higher than in the western Pacific.
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(“Order-of-magnitude” is a scientific term which means 10 times higher. The “Western Pacific” means Japan’s East Coast.)
In May, a team of scientists from Spain, Australia and France concluded that the radioactive cesium would look more like this:
A team of top Chinese scientists has just published a study in the Science China Earth Sciences journal showing that the radioactive plume crosses the ocean in a nearly straight line toward North America, and that it appears to stay together with little dispersion:
On March 30, 2011, the Japan Central News Agency reported the monitored radioactive pollutions that were 4000 times higher than the standard level. Whether or not these nuclear pollutants will be transported to the Pacific-neighboring countries through oceanic circulations becomes a world-wide concern.
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The time scale of the nuclear pollutants reaching the west coast of America is 3.2 years if it is estimated using the surface drifting buoys and 3.9 years if it is estimated using the nuclear pollutant particulate tracers.
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The half life of cesium-137 is so long that it produces more damage to human. Figure 4 gives the examples of the distribution of the impact strength of Cesium-137 at year 1.5 (panel (a)), year 3.5 (panel (b)), and year 4 (panel (c)).
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It is worth noting that due to the current near the shore cannot be well reconstructed by the global ocean reanalysis, some nuclear pollutant particulate tracers may come to rest in near shore area, which may result in additional uncertainty in the estimation of the impact strength.
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Since the major transport mechanism of nuclear pollutants for the west coast of America is the Kuroshio-extension currents, after four years, the impact strength of Cesium-137 in the west coast area of America is as high as 4%.
Bluefin tuna on the California shore tested positive for radiation from Fukushima, and there are reports of highly radioactive fish in Canada.
The CBS show The Doctors warned that we should be moderate with our fish intake, and children and pregnant women should be especially careful
Read more at http://www.realfarmacy.com/scientists-baffled-by-melting-starfish-c...