What's Going On?: 2011

Thursday, June 02, 2011

5/30 Discussion on linked blog from 放射能から子ども達を守る情報交換

On May 30, a Japanese mother in Tokyo posted a link to some blog and asked to comment on it. Discussion went off-course. This post isn't as interesting as others, particulary Mr. Sanns's notes. I won't recommend it to a lot of readers but might be worth if you're bored. Why? Patrick, the new idol of TRL communitiy page, joined the crowd.

I responded bluntly to this post on facebook but decided to take a look at the chart on the linked blog upon posting. The blog itself isn't bad--got some facts and I can see the writer has done some reasearch, good or bad. Being lazy to check all those facts, I decided to focus on the numbers.

A quick Google search told me that 1 Bq ≅ 2.70×10⁻¹¹ Ci, according to Wikipedia.

1km = 1000m, therefore 1m²= 1/10⁶ of 1km².

Using the numbers on the top row, the writer mention 952Bq of Caesium-137 was detected per kg of soil at a place in Chiyoda ward of Tokyo. S/he multiplied 952 by 65, saying the NSC mentioned convert Bq/kg to Bq/m². That will be:

(61,880Bq/m²)(2.70×10⁻¹¹Ci/Bq)(10⁶km²/1m²)=1.67Ci/km²

So the numbers are correct.

I randomly clicked on the souce which the writer blogged "multiply by 65" and the linked article written by Ryuichi Kino, a Japanese freelance journalist, popped up on my computer screen:

"I asked how could Bq/kg be converted to Bq/m² to the NSC, and they responded, 'just give it the 65th power."

Whoa, for real? To the 65th power?

What happens is this:

(952⁶⁵Bq/m²)(2.70×10⁻¹¹Ci/Bq)(10⁶km²/1m²)=too big to show up on my TI-83.

Well, here it is--after Japanese post right below.

放射能から子ども達を守る情報交換 ('Exchanging Information to Protect Children from Radiation')

HI TRL ! Im akiko katsuo
could you please, give me lecture this date analysis. I cant read this date my brain isnt scientific .. Is this danger ?
Summary of Detected Radioactive Materials on Soil: A Call for Physical Examination on Internal Exposure in Wide Area

（原文：土壌調査をまとめてみた：広域での体内被曝検診を求めます）

James Those readings are over 6 weeks old

放射能から子ども達を守る情報交換 thanks a lot .　i will search . this network is excellent !

Reisel Mary Yes James but the analysis is from May 15th and it's not a very reassuring one, not for Tokyo and much less for people around the 30km evacuation zone.

Emiko Just wondering if these reading are 6mths old or not? Have they gone down a lot in the past 6weeks?? Hope so.....?

Emiko I meant say if it matters that the reading are 6monhts old or not...

James

‎@Reisel the data in the graph shown is old. And when you click the link to his "source" its a keitai pic of that infamous Asahi Shinbun chart from mid April. This blog is presenting its case from a severely skewed anti-nuclear stance. There is also the usual cast of characters included from Caldicott and Busby.
I couldn't waste my time on even going over the numbers,
I only had to look a few posts back to see this informative post <<Wind Power Can Supply Energy Equivalent to 950 Nuclear Reactors in Japan>> 'nuff said.

Tokyo Radiation Levels

Busby is not reasonable. He's saying that the explosions that occurred at Fukushima were not hydrogen explosions but nuclear explosions. I've not seen measurements in Tokyo on the order of contamination of the Chernobyl exclusion zone. A lot of "experts" are pointing out that some measurements in Tokyo are above measurements in the Chernobyl exclusion zone. Well first they compared levels in Kanamachi area (east Tokyo) in April to levels measured in Chernobyl recently (25 years after the Chernobyl accident). Tokyo is orders of magnitude below what the Chernobyl exclusion zone was months after the accident.

Patrick Numbers don't lie . I said I was hoping NOT the exclusion zone. They refer to it as 3rd contamination zone, so it's probably not the exclusion zone ( I'm pretty sure ) . Somebody may look it up and see how far that is from Chernobyl plant, but numbers are 37000Bq/m2 and Tokyo numbers are 32000Bq/m2. Same thing

Oh, yes. We don't know what that explosion was. All we know is that TEPCO/government lied about it and waited 2 months to tell us that HUGE amount of radiation was released on that day. So, I'm not saying Busby is right, but I don't wanna say he was wrong either ( nobody here can say for sure ).

Jill Er, we knew in that first week that HUGE amounts of radiation was released on that day. And some people said "It looks like there was a meltdown." And then certain newsies said "There was a meltdown! YOU'RE ALL GOING TO DIE YOU HAVE TO LEAVE JAPAN!" And the plume of radioactivity swivelled out over the ocean towards the U.S. where people started buying up all the Potassium Iodide gibbering, "We're gonna get radiation poisoning!"

Antonio ‎@ Patrick. This map shows the contamination in Europe after Chernobyl and compares it with a map of japan at the same scale:

Patrick No, you did not know just how HUGE it really was until 2 months later. I'm only using official measurements and not "we are all going to die" blogs.

Patrick According to that map one part of Tokyo falls under the upper part of the orange contamination and close to the first red. No, that does not make me happy.

Antonio ‎@ Patrick. Tokyo falls under the orange contamination area of Chernobyl on that map?

Jill The Fukushima plant is not the Chernobyl plant.

Patrick Orange area is 10 - 40 KBq/m2 ( Chernobyl map ) They found 32KBq/m2 in one part of Tokyo, so yes that part would fall into the orange, almost red.

Daniel That sample from Kameido doesn't quite fit into the "3rd zone" (which is actually the 4th zone.) The zone covered 37-185 kBq/m2

Patrick Too close for comfort then?????

Antonio

‎@ Patrick. They didn't find 32 KBq/m2, they found 1600 Bq/Kq on one soil sample, which was later extrapolated to surface contamination by the blogger. Again, reading the disclaimer is important: "Please note that methods of soil researches here are not unified, and this would result in various detected numbers. For example, results change with conditions of soils and depth of soil location. So PLEASE do not judge based on this graph if where you are is safe or not."

Patrick Well, that is the problem, isn't it? I've mentioned this before. Somebody takes a measurement, throws out a number and doesn't explain anything about it. From Asahi ( original source ), I believe it was 3200Bq/Kg. What the f*&# does that mean. You can dig up 1 Kg of dirt within one meter area, but you could also just take a thin top soil layer and would take you 1km2 to collect 1Kg.

Daniel It's scaremongering 101.

Jill Patrick is an advanced student.

Tokyo Radiation Levels

From what I can tell the data that this guy uses is from this article in the Asahi Shimbun (http://savechild.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/file7582.jpg).
This is about measured fallout in the soil back in April. We've had significant rain since the measurement period. These levels are unlikely to be still relevant. I'm going to extrapolate that a lot of this contamination in the soil has been washed away. We know that drains have higher radiation because they concentrate the runoff dirt from a larger area, and recently it was reported the sewage had high concentrations of radioactive contaminants. Therefore a lot of it has washed a way.

I'm been looking for soil measurement data since I got up this morning but no luck, so I can't find any hard facts to back this up (yet), but I think it's a reasonable assumption.

Patrick: I think you'll find that it's pretty certain it was a hydrogen explosion since they were worried about it at the beginning. The water reacts with zirconium cladding of the fuel at hight temperatures and catalyses the breakup of wat...See more

Akiko Katsuo http://www.facebook.com/pages/中鬼と大鬼のふたりごと/163058623757032　
i found this guy s page

Tokyo Radiation Levels Found this link on that page: https://www.facebook.com/notes/wu-zeheng/the-prevention-of-nuclear-radiation-%E6%A0%B8%E8%BE%90%E5%B0%84%E9%98%B2%E6%B2%BB/201876396510982

Akiko Katsuo Chinese medicine ..I dont like pickled dish, but for my baby !

Akiko Katsuo I will use my chinese network . thanks

Akiko Katsuo yellow rice wine:紹興酒　　

Akiko Katsuo radiation detox page: http://isehakusan.blog.fc2.com/blog-category-34.html these days my concern about radiation detox !!

Tokyo Radiation Levels There is no real radiation detox. Any product claiming that it removes radiation is a scam. I've seen a lot of mention of Borax (Boron) being sold as a product to remove radiation from the body. I'm sure this is from the misunderstanding of how boron is used as a neutron poison and radiation shield.

Antonio ‎"To prevent infections caused by nuclear radiation, chew 10 grains of soybean, one time in the morning and one in the evening. When you take the Prescription of Soybean you should be fasting in strict accordance with “Cryptic Key of Fasting”." Is this a joke?

Akiko Katsuo oh my god

Tokyo Radiation Levels Prevention is the idea here, not cure.

Patrick: Asahi didn't report or find 3200Bq/m2, they found 1600 Bq/Kq as Antonio already said. I really recommend that you slow down on the quick fire responses and spend some time on your responses, because twice in this thread you've made the same mistake, and you've contradicted yourself.

[Later] I misunderstood your reply. What I meant to say though was 3,201 Bq/kg is what they found, not 32,000 Bq/m2 (1600 Bq/kg). However yet again you've come out with unsupported crap in your replies. "The government purposefully doesn't explain anything"?? Purposefully? It was true that back in March and April they were poorly organised and didn't provide useful information. But since May helpful info has been coming out like food contamination levels reports and wide sorts of testing. Stop passing your opinions off as fact.

Antonio

‎@ TRL. Actually, I may have made a mistake before. According to the article in Asahi, Prof. Yamazaki found (in April 16th) 3200 Bq/kg of radiactive cesium (Both 134 & 137) in one of the four soil samples from Tokyo. That's the only hard data we have about Tokyo on that chart. Based on that, this is what the blogger did: a) assume that half of the radioactive cesium was cesium 137 (1600 Bq/Kq) b) extrapolate from those soil samples a possible surface contamination (without any data about how the samples were obtained)

Tokyo Radiation Levels I explained my understanding of the facts above, and how they are not relevant now. You refer to organisations and quote different people but you almost never provide a link to back up your facts. How do we know you're not passing off opinion as fact?

Romain: I didn't know pectin could do that for caesium. Some chemicals can bond, react or assist with the removal of particular radionuclides from your body. Iodine-131 can't be removed but it's absorption can be prevented/restricted. However anything blanket claiming to remove radiation from your body is obviously fake and preying on peoples' fears.
Apparently red wine though can help reduce the damage from radiation exposure. It correlates with cancer patients undergoing radiation therapy. People who apparently drink red wine after treatment show less of the effects of radiation. It could just be the the wine is making people relaxed or calm, but it's got the attention of researchers and it's being taken seriously.

Patrick what do you mean. You linked to the exact same Asahi article I linked. And the blog we are discussing + that Chernobyl map were provided by others ( the numbers and organisations I mantion are all in that blog / link at the top of this discussion ). I was simply commenting on those. I don't link to any other sources because I stick only to what's official or at least seems reasonable. Anyway we both linked the same Asahi image and other numbers/organizations are in the blog we are discussing, it's all there.

Jill I'm not sure we've helped Akiko Katsuo, here.

Moi Well, we're all alive after all.

Jill Hey, speak for yourself! I'm the undead!

Wednesday, June 01, 2011

ぶらぶらブロガー参上？

5/17の記念するべく（？）一番最初のブログエントリーに日本語の題名をつけておきながら何も書いていないのもなんだと思ったので、自己満足程度に書いております。

ネット上を漂流していると、「あれまぁ、すごいねー」と感心するほど熱心に書き込みしているブロガーがよくいますよね。自分は全く熱心ではありません。

そもそもこのブログの立ち上げは、Facebook上の有意義な議論をもっと気軽に検索して読むためです。Facebookに外国人がガイガーカウンターで個人的に放射線量を報告するTokyo Radiation Levelsというコミュニティーページがあって、初期は「何で新宿モニタリングポストの数値の倍以上あるの？」など放射能に関する質問と刻々と変化していた（実はそうでもなかったが、公式発表がそう思わせていただけ）東京電力福島第一原子力発電所の状況を科学的視点の解説で埋まっていたんです。その解説がなかなかなので、集めてみました。実際、かなり勉強になったし。

4月に入ると、ろくに調べもしないで気軽に「東京に行くんだけど、安全かな？」「大阪と京都に行きたいんだけど、大丈夫なの？」と訪ねて来る人が多くなってきました。
日本＝福島というイメージが固定されてしまったようです。

「ネットあるなら、さくっと調べろよ。日本地図みて京都と東京と福島県を見つけてから聞けよ。」
そんな雰囲気がさすがに漂ってきて、外国人観光客向けのエントリーも書きました。
効果は不明ですが、ダニエル・カールの気持ちが少しわかったと思います。

更新が漂っても、ゆる～く続けるかもしれません。

5/2 Discussion on Helen Caldicott's Opinion on the NYT

Hello Helen Caldicott fans.

Videos of Helen Caldicott were posted on TRL facebook community page for a number of times (yes, exactly the same video). Here's the thread on the article (Opinion) that appeared on the New York Times in the end of April. For Caldicott's press confrence video, refer to Part1 and Part 2.

Hope you find them helpful--well, at least, able to zip your mouth on TRL page.

Tom Schinaman

TRL and Frank, could you comment on this: "Unsafe at Any Dose--Doctors must do more than treat cancers. We must enter the nuclear debate."? There are some very dire-sounding, sweeping statements in this piece that strike me as running counter to what you've been saying here. While the piece is suspiciously void of citations/evidence supporting these statements, it is still alarming for a layperson to read this kind of thing in the MSM. Thanks very much.

James its the no threshold theory again, yes there is no "safe" level of radiation, but the risks lessen as does the levels of radiation. Also this author is an advocate against nuclear power.

Tokyo Radiation Levels It was written by Helen Caldicott and it's not an article, in the opinion pieces section for a reason. She's a known critic of anything nuclear and she gives false information to make people alarmed. She does things I can't agree with like protesting Australia's only nuclear reactor which is used for producing 100% of Australia's (nuclear) cancer treating medicine and other nuclear medicine (as well as research). I do agree with some of her opinions, especially on depleted uranium munitions used in war. But she's exaggerates to get her point across and it lowers her credibility substantially in my opinions. Please, no more Coldicott posts people as we've discussed her enough in the past.

Having said that Leukemia was the scourge of children after Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombing, but they were exposed to a lot higher doses of contaminants. True more was release from Fukushima, but it mostly went out to sea. There's not a lot of balance to her writing.

Tom Thanks James & TRL. I understand that this is an opinion piece, not an article. @TRL, apologies, I haven't seen any of the previous discussions of Caldicott and certainly don't mean to perpetuate her views. I was hoping to hear your view on whether there is a scientific basis for her opinions, but if you've posted this info previously I'll look for it.

Tokyo Radiation Levels That's fine. There is some scientific basis for her views, but she over exaggerates the the proportions involved in this situation. If you eat 100g of plutonium you're probably going to die of cancer (or heavy metal toxicity), but she has said in the past that you will definitely get cancer from just 1 atom of plutonium in your lungs. (we are all exposed to plutonium in the soils all over the world thanks to nuclear test and not everyone has lung cancer).

Anna Tom, here's an interesting article written about Caldicott http://www.monbiot.com/2011/04/04/evidence-meltdown/ shame on the NY Times editors for scaremongering.

Charles Thanks for the balance.

Tokyo Radiation Levels The WHO suggested crisis limit is 2000 Bq/kg for water. Since you would get most of your Cs-137 from water and a human drinks about 3 liters a day + 2 kg for food, then 10,000 Bq a day is likely the limit. I've not been able to find a hard limit or a document giving a max but this is based on normal intake and the WHO limits factor in normal intakes. It's my best guess.

Guille Thanks a lot for your information, you can't imagine how I appreciate your work on facebook... I was just thinking about the 'limit' received by air. Anyway, it seems not to be so high and improving (the whole situation). From Tokyo, I LOVE JAPAN.

5/8 Release of Contamaination of Radionuclides in the Sky within 80km radius

This post is pretty outdated as well--the link below show the map of 80km from FNPP and its contamination levels up high in the air. MEXT and the U.S. forces fled the inner 80km radius and gathered data on contamination.

The guy below (who posted the link) dramatically calls the map, "Map of Hell" but don't let him freak you out. He should have reconsidered re-naming, it's too insensitive. He should be compassionate and caring, especially during these hard times. As of May 31st, 18% of entire people living in Iitate refused to evacuate the area for not being able to find a place to live outside their region. People still live there. Even those who left have part of themselves there.
Good or bad, it's one accumulated data. Good or bad, it's something that affected people has to face.

Well, here it is.

Hirotsugu Nakanishi

The map of hell.
Mext and the U.S published latest level report.
http://www.mext.go.jp/a_menu/saigaijohou/syousai/__icsFiles/afieldfile/2011/05/06/1304694_0506.pdf

Geoffrey Can’t find an english version, only Japanese, is there one in english?

Jill And can't see it on the browser I'm using.

James I can see it... but why is it the "map of hell"?

Hirotsugu it's in Japanese. Sorry
If you can't see it on your browser Then try to in MEXT web site. and maybe there's subscription in English.
why it's hell? cos there are too spoiled purification badly in radiation for human tough to livelihood. made a place no one wants to go. I beg to people to get out of there soon...

Jill Well, so has the government.

Tokyo Radiation Levels Hirostugu: Thank you for this map. There are danger areas and some places will not be able to be safely inhabited for quite a while. The dangerous places 30km from the plant and Iitate have been evacuated. The other areas do have a high background radiation level but not immediately dangerous or cumulative. It is risky for children in some places my opinion but not deadly. However, there are hotspots in these towns, and parks seem to be quite high as my Koriyama trip suggests. Certainly more attention and information needs to be given to the people living there, and the government and science bodies finally seem to be getting their act together and have started putting out un-glossed over information (like what you just posted).

But people live there still and you need to sensitive to this. So please don't post these kind of "map of hell" and fear mongering stuff from the safety of Tokyo or where you live (unless you live in the affected areas) because it doesn't help anyone. I get the feeling you don't quite understand the map, since an area marked on it doesn't mean it's spoiled land. It's showing concentrations of particular contaminants.

Jill Hell is just too dramatic. Say it like it is "A map of radiation concentration. Red is really, really bad."

Tokyo Radiation Levels The first map is dose. Red and orange will put you over the yearly limit in 3 months. Yellow is OK for a short while too. Green is livable but you'll get a higher yearly dose than normal (but under 20 mSv year).

Second, third and fourth map is concentration of contaminants on the ground. Green is OK for living but wouldn't eat food unless grew in the blue areas.

Interesting to note from the first map that a few kilometers north of the fukuhsima daiichi plant and also less than 20 km south (both inside the exclusion zone) it's marked as blue and it would be safe to live in those areas. However 50km to the north west (outside the exclusion zone) it's unsafe.

Thanks Romain, some good points actually. Judging by what happened in Chernobyl about 20-50% of the yearly dose of people in affected USSR states could be attributed to internal radiation. However the water and food were not regulated so people were ingesting heavily contaminated water and food. I think this is less an issue here so internal dose will mostly be incidental do what you breath in or drank in the last 2 months (if drinking Fukushima tap water).

You're right that some people may be able to go over 20 mSv/year in the green in certain circumstances, but it would seem that even though there is a high dose outside, the sheer amount of time people spend in cement areas, parks or forests is likely negligible compared to time spent inside and in places with lower amounts of contaminants. Still it seems that the effects of a dose below 200 mSv/year and 100 mSv the next year are not really understood because cancer doesn't particularly stand out in those groups according to a few papers I read (also in the first link below). However dose doesn't equal exposure to particular contaminants so I'm not talking about ingesting say I-131, and certainly there will be plenty of Cs-137 around for a while now. But people being educated properly about the risks by the government and being careful not to eat food they grow in contaminated areas is an important factor in prevention of long term risk factors. Looking at google maps, it seems that not a lot of populated places fortunately lie in the green. The big population centers are in the light and dark blue and Iitate is evacuated (though there seems to be one town in the green but I can't read it's name).

Sorry I'm rambling but thanks for making me think about it more. I haven't been called a Pollyanna before, but I really liked the book when I was a kid.

Some interesting sources if you want to read more.

About internal dose and exposure the Europeans (1997): http://epirev.oxfordjournals.org/content/19/2/187.full.pdf

WHO report on chernobyl from 1986:
http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Magazines/Bulletin/Bull283/28302792729.pdf

Paper critical of IAEA (2006):
http://epirev.oxfordjournals.org/content/19/2/187.full.pdf

Decidedly anti nuclear:
Fallout and genetic effects:
http://www.ratical.org/radiation/Chernobyl/RIGEinEuroandCNPPc.pdf

Health effects of Chernobyl slide:
http://www.chernobylcongress.org/fileadmin/user_upload/pdfs/fairlie.pdf

I just want to add that this is completely my opinion. I've read up on this quite a bit and I've come to this conclusion on my own. I don't want to mislead anyone into making a decision based solely on what I think. I'm also not saying this because I doubt myself either, but I just want to not pass myself off as THE definitive expert on this.

Romain Fair enough :-). I am no expert either. But it is by always listening and criticize each other in a positive manner that we can reconsider our position and understand things better, as long as it is driven by logic. Btw, I have read that radiation in building is 40% of the amount you would get outside. I am really wondering how they get those values considering the half-distance for gamma rays in material. Honestly, a 80% seems a lot more logical to me for typical Japanese houses. (some wood, very light metal plate, etc...) compared to a concrete based building (even in thise case, it really depends on the position of your apartment inside the building)

5/30 Helen Caldicott Video Discussion Part 2

Hello Helen Caldicott fans.

Videos of Helen Caldicott were posted on TRL facebook community page for a number of times (yes, exactly the same video). Here's a compilation of discussion on her claims--this is the May 30 version. Click HERE for Part 1. Looking for how the TRL community responded on her New York Times opinion article? Click HERE.

Hope you find them helpful--well, at least, able to zip your mouth on TRL page.

Alright, here is part 2.

Darius Smith

This women is highly regarded as the best in her field watch this ....

Dr Helen Caldicott - Fukushima Nuclear Disaster- You won't hear this on the Main Stream News.

Nuclear Facts you'd be more comfortable not knowing from a very clued up professional who will not be bought or intimidated into silence: Dr Helen Caldicott...

Monty Hi Darius, No disrespect intended but this is six weeks old and I think many of us here are looking for up-to-date information.

Donna Way to go! Yay to mankind. Idiots just freakin' killed us all!! Now, to just wait for the worst suffering ever. At least she's being HONEST with us! How sad. :(

Jill I don't know if she's being honest with us, but for the many times someone has posted this here, each time we've really, really um... ragged on it.

Daniel I stumbled upon her facebook page the other day. It explained a lot.

James also favorite quote from her video "DONT eat European food!"

Jill See? We're ragging!

Jon Can she back up the 1 million deaths from Chernobyl statement?

Antonio Dr Helen Caldicott doesn't seem to be very good when it comes to providing evidence of what she says, according to this guy: http://www.monbiot.com/2011/04/04/evidence-meltdown/ I don't support his pro-nuclear stance, but the article and the supporting correspondence between them make for a mildly amusing read.

Patrick meant to write has not been disputed ( in my editing admitted stuck there ) by the other side. They just dispute the cause.

Tokyo Radiation Levels Patrick: I believe the criticism of the book you're referring to (which is actually a collection of papers by Yablokov and others translated from Russian) is that they assume all the deaths from some particular cancers and diseases are all a result of Chernobyl. I wouldn't call it a fact that a million deaths are attributed to that. Especially since there was a massive effort in monitoring at risk populations for cancer.

Book: http://www.nyas.org/publications/annals/Detail.aspx?cid=f3f3bd16-51ba-4d7b-a086-753f44b3bfc1

Once again you contradict yourself. "The only real quickie fact seems to be that after Chernobyl there were additional million deaths that statistically should not have been there".

Patrick It's not a contradiction. There are million additional deaths ( even Monbiot did not dispute that ), but we do not know whether they were all, or how many, caused by Chernobyl. By the way, I never contradict myself :-). So: million additional deaths = fact. Cause of those deaths is open to interpretation.

Tokyo Radiation Levels There are not a million additional deaths. The researches of the paper are criticized for over attributing deaths to Chernobyl. If 100 people died in their bed last year and I put out a paper saying 100 people died in bed as a result of Chernobyl, I'm not saying that 200 people died.

@Patrick: "Increased deaths from a wide range of diseases – including many which have no known association with radiation" does not mean 985000 additional deaths. This is the article you're referring to, I take it: http://www.monbiot.com/2011/04/04/evidence-meltdown/

Ken Wow, she said don't eat European food!

Philip I have seen her before - full of inaccuracies and scare mongering. But let's look first at the (disputed) one million number: That works out to 40,000 / year over the past 25 years since Chernobyl, which is about a third higher than the annual death toll on US roads. Maybe we should shut down the US road system too. Chernobyl and Fukushima have added another carcinogen to the environment, along with the tons of chemicals, exhaust fumes, coal trailings, medical radiation. Her approach to exposing the dangers of nuclear power is not nearly as effective as it would be if she were reasoned and proportionate.

Me She said, "Don't eat European food." Now she's saying, "Dont' eat Japanese food?" Then maybe she'll start saying, "Don't eat Asian food." After all that, what's left is some bits of normal food from the rest of the world with growing number of genetically modified crops and food grown with a lot of fertilizers and insecticide. She's a doctor, what will she say on that? (Being sarcastic)

Jill Do not eat or drink ANYTHING, it will kill you! *wink*

David ‎"Don't eat European food" means she has hopelessly lost the plot... which is a real shame because what it serves to do is discredit some very interesting, and probably valid, scientific research which suggests that the environmental and medical cost of Chernobyl was and remains a great deal worse than official stats and which if it weren't for her BS might be gaining more traction and making the anti-nuclear case more bullet proof

4/21 Discussion on Helen Caldicott Video

Hello Helen Caldicott fans.

Videos of Helen Caldicott were posted on TRL facebook community page for a number of times (yes, exactly the same video). Here's a compilation of discussion on her claims--this is the April 21st version. For part 2 (May 30 version), click HERE or "May 30." Looking for how the TRL community responded on her New York Times opinion article? Click HERE.

Hope you find them helpful--well, at least, able to zip your mouth on TRL page.

Alright, here is part 1.

Maria Aki Dougherty

GLOBAL RESEARCH. Dangers of Nuclear War. Press conference by Helen Caldicott in Montreal. March2011

Press conference by Helen Caldicott in Montreal: The Dangers of Nuclear War. March 18 2011.

Please watch, something you won't see on mainstream news.

Frank Sanns There are so many false statements in this video, I do not even know where to start. It is over sensational journalism.

Maria Aki I'm glad that you say so.

Frank Sanns She also finished it off nicely with her slip of a little misandry in the quote: "the reptilian mid-brain of some men's brains is pathological" .

Maria Aki not nice... mean. Hoping for the best.

Tokyo Radiation Levels Does it make you scared? Scared of nuclear energy and all the horrors it brings? That's what Caldicott basically does. Plays on your fears to push her anti-nuclear agenda. Basically, it's mostly a gross exaggeration without supporting facts. She say "you get a lump in your breast, how can you say it's not from Sr-90 you ate in a fish 20 years ago?". This is vague and sounds scary, but it's just playing on your fears. Like Frank said, too many false statements.

Frank Sanns @Maria, I did not mean an insult to you but this video is not based on scientific facts. Sure there are some facts mixed into there but this is classic smoke and mirrors. Let me give you an example, she mentions that cesium and strontium are around for 600 years. They have a 30 year half life. In 30 years there is half, 60 years a quarter, 90 one eight, 120 one sixteenth, 150 one thirty second up to 600 years which is around one millionth the starting amount. She is exaggerating the truth to make the numbers sound like forever. An the isotopes that she mentions that have millions of years of half life do not emit much radioactivity at all so they are no more dangerous than other heavy metals. Then she says don't eat any food in Europe. Chernobyl was in 1986, did the population of Europe disappear? No, last I looked it was fairly well populated.

Maria Aki Dougherty No, I meant that she is mean... I want to know what you have to say. I am not afraid. This is what is circulating on facebook. Don't really know what to think. I am glad that you both are telling me that this is a gross exaggeration. Thank you.

Lynn Brogan Sounds like gross exaggeration to me too -compare wth other information about Tokyo radiation levels.If we believe this woman Japan would not have recovered from the atom bombs dropped in world war two

Chris I think most strongly anti-nuclear activists like to stir the pot at times like this... she is well-known for doing all she can to dirty an already taboo subject in nuclear energy so I wouldn't take anything from her on this subject as being gospel ��Ｓ � C � � �� ;mso-font-kerning:0pt'>
About internal dose and exposure the Europeans (1997): http://epirev.oxfordjournals.org/content/19/2/187.full.pdf

WHO report on chernobyl from 1986:
http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Magazines/Bulletin/Bull283/28302792729.pdf

Paper critical of IAEA (2006):
http://epirev.oxfordjournals.org/content/19/2/187.full.pdf

Decidedly anti nuclear:
Fallout and genetic effects:
http://www.ratical.org/radiation/Chernobyl/RIGEinEuroandCNPPc.pdf

Health effects of Chernobyl slide:
http://www.chernobylcongress.org/fileadmin/user_upload/pdfs/fairlie.pdf

Tokyo Radiation Levels I just want to add that this is completely my opinion. I've read up on this quite a bit and I've come to this conclusion on my own. I don't want to mislead anyone into making a decision based solely on what I think. I'm also not saying this because I doubt myself either, but I just want to not pass myself off as THE definitive expert on this.