Are infants born on the US West Coast and Hawaii in danger?

Fukushima is here, it is no longer a Japanese problem – it is a growing world problem which is still being ignored.

Fukushima is here, it is no longer a Japanese problem – it is a growing world problem which is still being ignored.

A new study in April of 2013 suggested that nuclear fallout from Fukushima in March of 2011 has led to significant elevated rates of congenital thyroid illness among infants born on the West Coast and Hawaii – keeping in mind that President Obama not only denied this threat but ordered the EPA to stop weekly & monthly testing for radiation in April of 2011 .

As such, a creeping and never ending deadly fog of radiation, invisible to the eye but not to the immune system,continues to blanket the West Coast while its human cost is just beginning to be perceived.

A new study in April of 2013 suggests that nuclear fallout from Fukushima in March of 2011 has led to significant elevated rates of congenital thyroid illness among infants born on the West Coast and Hawaii – keeping in mind that President Obama not only denied this threat but ordered the EPA to stop weekly & monthly testing for radiation in April of 2011:

Allen L. Roland wrote this article for Veterans Today in May 2013:
A creeping and never ending deadly fog of radiation, invisible to the eye but not to the immune system, continues to blanket the West Coast while its human cost is just beginning to be perceived.

The threat and ongoing cover up of the nuclear fallout of the Fukushima melt down in 2011 continues unabated and now, two years later, the human cost of this catastrophe and cover up are now being published – especially with infants.

For example, a peer-reviewed research paper, published in the Open Journal of Pediatrics, found increased rates of congenital hypothyroidism (CH) in West Coast babies born within nine months of the Fukushima meltdowns beginning March 11, 2011 – โ€œ Newborns in Alaska, California, Hawaii, Oregon and Washington showed up to 28 percent higher rates of CH than in 36 control states. If left untreated, congenital hypothyroidism can impede physical and mental development.”

It also appears that radiation has already killed over 14,000 Americans as Thom Hartman shockingly discovered during his 7 minute video interview with Dr. Janette Sherman, M.D., Internist and Toxicologist. These are apparently the same levels of death that were found at Chernobyl and the radiation effects could easily last over 300 years.

WHAT ABOUT THE ONGOING THREAT OF FUKUSHIMA FALLOUT?

The Washington Blog posed that same question on April 13, 2013 – Is Fukushima Leakingโ€ฆ Or Are the Reactors Wholly Uncontained?
โ€œYou may have heard that Tepco – the operator of the stricken Fukushima nuclear power plants – announced a large leak of radioactive waterโ€ฆ. You may have heard that the cooling system in the spent fuel pools at Fukushima has failed for a second time in a month.

This is newsworthy stuffโ€ฆ but completely misses the big picture. Associated Press notes: โ€Experts suspect a continuous leak into the ocean through an underground water system, citing high levels of contamination in fish caught in waters just off the plant.(Tepco graphics of the Fukushima plants even appear to show water directly flowing from the plant to the ocean. And see this.) In fact, Japanese experts say that Fukushima is currently releasing up to 93 billion becquerels of radioactive cesium into the ocean each day.โ€
How much radiation is that?

โ€œA quick calculation shows that Chernobyl released around ten thousand times more radioactive cesium each day during the reactor fire. But the Chernobyl fire only lasted 10 daysโ€ฆ and the Fukushima release has been ongoing for more than 2 years so far. Indeed, Fukushima has already spewed much more radioactive cesium and iodine 131 than Chernobyl. The amount of radioactive cesium released by Fukushima was some 20-30 times higher than initially admitted.

“Fukushima also pumped out huge amounts of radioactive iodine 129 – which has a half-life of 15.7 million years. Fukushima has also dumped up to 900 trillion becquerels of radioactive strontium-90 – which is a powerful internal emitter which mimics calcium and collects in our bones – into the ocean. And the amount of radioactive fuel at Fukushima dwarfs Chernobylโ€ฆ and so could keep leaking for decades, centuries or millennia.โ€

โ€The bottom line is that the reactors have lost containment. There are not โ€œsome leaksโ€ at Fukushima. โ€œLeaksโ€ imply that the reactor cores are safely in their containment buildings, and there is a small hole or two which need to be plugged. But scientists donโ€™t even know where the cores of the reactors are. Thatโ€™s not leaking. Thatโ€™s even worse than a total meltdown.โ€

So what are the consequences for people living outside of Fukushima itself? They could be quite severe, indeed.โ€

Letโ€™s use tuna as a radiation example – The ocean currents head from Japan to the West Coast of the U.S. For example, the Telegraph notes that scientists tagged a Bluefin tuna and found that it crossed between Japan and the West Coast three times in 600 days – the Bluefin spawn off Japan, and many migrate across the Pacific Ocean. Tissue samples taken from 15 Bluefin caught in August, five months after the meltdowns at Fukushima Daiichi, all contained reactor byproducts cesium-134 and cesium-137 at levels that produced radiation about 3% higher than natural background sourcesโ€ฆ The bad news is that it is only going to get worse.โ€

As Reuters points out: โ€Unlike some other compounds, radioactive cesium does not quickly sink to the sea bottom but remains dispersed in the water column, from the surface to the ocean floor. Fish can swim right through it, ingesting it through their gills, by taking in seawater or by eating organisms…”

As CNN notes: โ€Neither (of the scientists who tested the fish) thought they were likely to find cesium at all, they said. And since the fish tested were born about a year before the disaster, โ€œThis yearโ€™s fish are going to be really interesting,โ€ Madigan said.

โ€œThere were fish born around the time of the accident, and those are the ones showing up in California right now,โ€ he said. โ€œThose have been, for the most part, swimming around in those contaminated waters their whole lives.โ€

In other words, the 15 fish tested were only exposed to radiation for a short time. But Bluefin arriving in California now will have been exposed to the Fukushima radiation for much longer.

So what has the American government done to protect us? (According to the Washington Post)

โ€It has pressured the Japanese government to re-start its nuclear program, and is allowing Fukushima seafood to be sold in the U.S. And U.S. nuclear regulators actually weakened safety standards for U.S. nuclear reactors after the Fukushima disaster. And as we noted 6 months after Fukushima melted down: American and Canadian authorities have virtually stopped monitoring airborne radiation, and are not testing fish for radiation. (Indeed, the EPA reacted to Fukushima by raising โ€œacceptableโ€ radiation levels.)โ€

In other words, there is currently a concerted worldwide propaganda campaign to cover up the severity of the major nuclear fallout of Fukushima by raising acceptable levels of radiation and, in essence, saying that a little more radiation in your system is nothing to be concerned about.

The cover up regarding exposure to radiation especially applies to Japan itself. On December 20, 2012, a multi-professional symposium was held in Tokyo, and organized by Free Press Association of Japan, a non-profit organization. The symposium clearly illustrates that the issues of radioactive exposure are considered taboo on the Japanese media – as they most certainly are on the American main stream media.

About the author

Avatar of Linda Hohnholz

Linda Hohnholz

Editor in chief for eTurboNews based in the eTN HQ.

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