Going to Japan 2012
 

Hi everyone,

Next year I plan to live and work in Japan in a place called British Hills for a year, (1-8 Shibakusa, Tarao, Ten-ei Village, Iwase District, Fukushima Pref) after sucessfully being accepted early this year. :)

However, after the big quake that struck Japan early in March and the radiation leaking out from the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant - I am worried.

I know very little of what the situation is like right now, despite reading the news, most of it is outdated by at least 2-3months and the stuff that's present still leaves you feeling blind.

I can't express how much I want this opportunity. I've always wanted to go to Japan and been learning Japanese at high-school for 4-5 years now. This is my last year at high school before entering University and I really want to take the next year off to enjoy myself and at the same time save enough money to cover my Uni fees and accomodation while I'm stuyding there.

If anyone knows any latest news on the situation in Fukushima, or is living somewhere in Fukushima Prefecture that can share a bit about what it's like there at the moment, that would be truely helpful and greatly appreciated.

Max

Ten-ei Village
radiation measurement data(JP)
http://www.vill.tenei.fukushima.jp/d...kkaichiran.pdf
http://www.vill.tenei.fukushima.jp/d...ekkagurafu.pdf

It goes if length-of-stay is within at half a year if it is me.:rolleyes:

Thank you Siokan,

You have given me some relief as to the situation in Ten-ei Village. If I read the japanese correctly, the radiation levels were measured in micro sievets - and it only keeps getting lower. :)

A Micro Sievet is 1000 milli sievets and 1000 milli is one sievet. (1 sievet is considered instant radiation sickness)

Phew! Glad we're far from it!

May I ask, where did you get the information from?

Thanks again,

Max

If I might suggest as somebody who had to disregard everything Japanese political sources tell me - do NOT look information inside Japan. Europe and USA both have extensive experience in these matters, the level of knowledge there is much higher. They do not need to be here in order to know better. Both European and US nuclear scientists publicly suspected meltdown when it was actually happening, instead of after several months like their Japanese counterparts. This is a recorded fact. Also, every radiation peak in Kanto area was predicted 12 hours before by combination of American weather data and SILAM simulations done by the Finnish Meteorological Institute (and several others, but I used this). All the peaks were confirmed by KEK institute at Tsukuba. Japanese politicos (government, local governments, Tepco, NISA, Tokyo University) revealed nothing during all this time.

About what you asked: you would probably be OK. You could get good connections as a foreigner who came to Fukushima during this time. The background radiation is 20x normal, but the smallest recorded radiation dose linked with cancer is 100mSv, and that would take about 10 years to accumulate with the present rate.

You would have to eat contaminated food "for the benefit of the local economy" or some crap like that. You would get cell damage, but those cells would die off anyway in about three months, which is their normal life span. Damage to DNA would not be so severe with such a low dose rate, so the regenerated cells would be healthy anyway. Body can fix all but the most severe DNA damage before cell division, so your future kid would probably have all fingers and toes. Unless you're the kind of Japanophile who prefers tentacles. Which might be a bit difficult to guarantee, though.

Gamma radiation from Cesium penetrates everything but the heaviest lead sheets, which is actually good news. Because of the penetration ability, there is 99% chance it won't even notice you while going through you without interacting in any way with your cells. Other radiation types (alpha, beta) are more interactive. But because of just that they can be blocked with, for example, a sheet of paper or a layer of air more than 10cm (4"). Neutron radiation is not good news, so avoid field trips to Fukushima nuclear plant in the next... 40 years or so (Chernobyl is 25 years and still going hot, so no quick fixes for Fukushima, either).

You would accumulate radioactive iodine (type beta) in your thyroid, creating a local radiation hot spot in your throat. Trust me, you don't want that. You might want to consider bringing food/spice products that contain clean iodine (I have not nor will ever recommend iodine medication, that stuff is way too concentrated). You would need a daily dosage of about 150 micrograms of iodine to keep your thyroid happy.

Radiation sickness and damage is NOT contagious. No more than an knife wound is. However, radioactive dust may transfer from clothing to clothing. If you're not in the habit of taking daily showers and using clean clothes, get one.

Wear a mask when it's especially dusty outside, wash your hands and face when coming inside, don't eat dirt, don't play in radiation hot spots, all that... Basically, increase and maintain your personal hygiene levels. Which is always a good idea in all occasions.

Dear Acjama,

Thank you very much for sharing your knowledge. I realise the danger as you've outlined below - wasn't planning on playing around the Nuclear Plant, so no worries there ;)

Just a quick question: You said the smallest recorded radiation dose linked with cancer is 100mSv. Is that micro or milli Sv?

Thanks again,

Max

World nuclear agency and nuclear countries said at least 40 km human free zone around Fukushima should exist. Meanwhile even in far Shizuoka famous green tea plantations are nuclear contaminated. It should maybe take 9 months to stop Fukushima irradiation! So, please be carefull. Kind regards.

Ten-ei Village web site:)
http://www.vill.tenei.fukushima.jp/
http://www.vill.tenei.fukushima.jp/k...isakuhonbu.asp
(Jpn lang only:( )
It is data that the municipality is originally measuring for the self-protection.

distance
Attachment 11660

Thanks everyone for your thoughts and advice.

I need as much as I can gather :)

British Hills seems to be about 100km away from the damaged Fukushima Nuclear Plant, would you say it's a safe distance? It is also isolated and is 1000m above sea level in Hatori National Park.

If 100mSv radiation is bathed in during year, 1/100 people get sick.
The influence by the low value is not clarified from this in a present science.
In short, you can do nothing but self-judge it. ┐(´ー｀)┌

British Hills radiation measurement data(JP)
http://www.british-hills.co.jp/news/report210.html

87.9748 km (｀・ω・´)

Though it is an unrelated story... British Hills seems to be drawn in the anime.

Seems like a bit of picturesque, if not a bit stereotyped, England in Japan. The houses do appear to look English!

That would be milli Sv.

And then, a humble correction based on this very cute chart:
"Lowest one-year dose clearly linked to increased cancer risk is 100 milli Sv".
Ahem, sorry about that. :pinkbow:

I don't think this is a particularly low value. There are over two million people in Fukushima. If everybody were subjected to 100mSv for a year, with the above effecting ratio that would mean 20 000 more terminally ill people in need of expensive long term medical treatment and care, not to mention compensations, lost work, lost income and taxes. This would paralyze health care and collapse local economy. Less people died in the March Tsunami. And the human tragedy hasn't even been accounted for in the above calculations.

Personally, I say that when calculating acceptable radiation levels, zero is the only acceptable answer.

Quick! Find a lead lined box and climb in. You are getting bombarded with radiation (if you are on planet Earth). Oh.....make sure not to eat bananas. And forget getting married... human bodies give off radiation.

As mentioned above, this is a useful chart I have long been sharing with my students http://xkcd.com/radiation/

Do some scientific research.

best,

..............john

PS: Having a scientifically identifiable risk of having illness from radiation exposuiure (100 miliSieverts) and dieing from cancer are NOT synonomous.

Hi John,

Thank you very much for the link to the radiation chart. Definitely shows some amazing stuff.

Radiation from bananas? I couldn't help but laugh :mtongue:

I'll continue to do my research, I don't depart until the end of 2011.

----------

Again, a BIG THANKS to all who've added their opinions and useful links. It's more information than I could find on the internet lately, all very up to date which exactly what I was looking for :)

JohnBraden - Seems like a bit of picturesque, if not a bit stereotyped, England in Japan. The houses do appear to look English! - Yes, definitely! That's the theme of British Hills hehe.

Max

There is no way to avoid all radiation exposure - the human body actually produces radiation... But I get your point.

I think that you have misunderstood the 1/100 figure though. 1 in a hundred is the number of people who have an actual increased risk of cancer - not the number who actually develop cancer... And certainly not the number who become terminally ill.

To be more exact, a single exposure of 100mSv has been shown to raise cancer risk around 0.5~1%. Long term exposure to lower amounts is a completely different matter and is almost impossible to measure. 100mSv over a YEAR is pretty much nothing. There is a fairly large city in Brazil (Guarapari) where the natural background radiation is almost 200mSv a year, and there has been no noticeable difference in cancer rates compared to everyone else. And people live their entire lives there with no decreases in radiation over the entire time.

So, basically, 100mSv a year for those living in Fukushima has such a tiny level of risk that it is impossible to calculate.

It is when you have a single large dose that things start to change and you begin to have an increased risk of developing cancer. A person`s lifetime risk of developing cancer is influenced by a number of things - for example, smoking raises your lifetime risk of developing cancer by anywhere between 2 and 15% (depends on how long and how much you smoke, etc). Drinking raises your risk of developing cancer by so many percent. Regular tanning by so many percent. So on and so on.
This *doesn`t* mean that you will die from cancer - it doesn`t even mean that you will develop cancer at all. It just means that on average, that many more people develop cancer than a group that didn`t do those things.

So... In the case of 1000 people receiving a dose of 100mSv - one extra person might develop some type of cancer as a result. Chances are, it will be thyroid cancer - one of the easiest to treat cancers with an excellent prognosis. In the case of 100,000, you may have one extra case of a more dangerous type of cancer... Out of 2,000,000, think more like 20 extra people with a terminal illness - not 20,000.

Either way though, it`s a moot point in the case of Fukushima as it is 100mSv in a single dose, not spread over a year.

I have never heard about these cities before. Very Informative!

I found out that Ramsar, Iran has the highest known year-average human exposure levels measured in an inhabited location.



Natural Radiation: High Background Radiation Areas (HBRAs) of Ramsar, Iran

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is called " Trolling out those who know better but for some reason won't speak out, and again facebook becomes information source for those in serious need of reassurances". I'm thinking about renaming it.

Thanks for the corrections. Some were indeed due to honest misunderstanding (those are better out than in), but some where well-used propaganda technique to take example in the farthest side of the direction the opponent is going and ridiculing that. Oh well, sometimes it works. :onismile:

I do have extreme opinions about how to handle radioactive exposure above the background level. I earned them with relevant academic grades AND experience as someone in charge of factory's radiation safety. I never had the emotional luxury of statistics, I had to look those people in the eye. And since I did not fail anybody, I don't need to understand actions of those who let little children piss cesium and tell them "everything is actually really good!". That's not how human world works.
(Can anybody guess which propaganda technique was used there? :mtongue: )

I said before and will say again, going to Fukushima won't probably come to a bad end, but aggressive zero-tolerance towards increase in radiation exposure is not only proven to be possible, it is also the only ethical approach.

"Cesium-134 and cesium-137 were detected in the urine samples of all 10 children aged between 6 and 16 who participated in the survey. The largest amount of cesium-134, which has a half-life of two years, was 1.13 becquerels per liter, found in the urine of an 8-year-old girl.

As for cesium-137, which has a half-life of 30 years, the largest amount was 1.30 becquerels per liter detected in a 7-year-old boy. No traces of iodine-131 were found in the test.

The government has set a safety limit of 200 becquerels of cesium per liter of water.

The samples were taken in late May in the city of Fukushima, more than 50 km from the Fukushima No. 1 plant.

"All (tested) kids are contaminated. . . . Currently the (government's) policy is mainly on external exposure, but internal exposure should be taken into consideration," ACRO Chairman David Boilley told a news conference in Tokyo.

Boilley said the exact levels of contamination can't be judged by urine tests alone because there is no direct correlation between contamination found in urine and contamination in the entire body. It was difficult to judge the contamination level because the amounts of cesium detected were small, he added."

Japan Times Online
Friday, July 1, 2011
Cesium found in child urine tests
By MIZUHO AOKI
Staff writer

Quoted under Fair Use statutes
red highlighting is mine


Just wanted to clarify the hot link in the posting directly above this a bit for those reading this thread that might not click on that link.

best,

..................john

If you were referring to my response... I don`t think that I was using any sort of propaganda. If you, any family or friends is one of those extra terminal illnesses... All the figures in the world aren`t going to make you feel any better.
The point I was trying to make is that the raised risk for the amounts that people are being exposed to in Fukushima are very hard to prove as increasing risk. The studies for those low amounts are so very scattered around the board that some of them show *lower* rates of cancer for those exposed... I am definitely not going to say that radiation is good for you by any stretch, but when it is so incredibly hard to find any negative effects that you find the opposite in some cases... I am not going to feel all that stressed about the levels.

I haven`t seen anyone telling people that it`s all okay let alone "good". What I do see is that they are unsure of the levels of exposure, but that they`re testing and trying to determine the levels of internal exposure.
You can`t just tell everyone to find somewhere else to live. There is no way to prevent the exposure at this point - the event has already occurred. What they can do is try to find out to what extent people were actually exposed, and take further precautions. Please clarify how they are "letting" the kids have this exposure, and how they can NOW prevent it. ("This should never have happened" is not a valid answer as it already HAS happened.)

It is a serious toss-up dependent on the situation, really. When the exposure is minimal, is it more ethical to send people away from their homes, familiar surroundings, and the areas they have lived their entire lives? As you acknowledge above, people are not mere statistics. There are countless things that would make people safer - there are countless locations people live that are a risk in some way. When we get down to it, all the people of Japan would likely have a much lower statistical risk of suffering from a natural disaster (earthquake, typhoon, tsunami) if they all moved out of the country... But that certainly isn`t going to compel everyone to move.

The question now isn`t "should we let there be lots of radiation?" but rather "what is best for the people who live in areas that have experienced contamination?"

Nyororin,

SO well said!

best,

.................john

- Thank you Bobby. You opened a bigger picture for me when it comes to looking at radiation and how much we live with everyday. Excellent Map which clearly shows this. :)

Just a quick question: The numbers next to the countries both in brackets and without are measured in micro SV or milli?

- Nyororin, thanks so much for sharing that information. I found it extremly helpful! :cool: I need as much as I can to help me make the right descision.

Milli........ which is the lower case "m". Micro is indicated with a character that is the lower case Greek mu....... "μ".

best,

................john

Agreed. Very eloquently spoken. Then I too shall (endeavor to) speak softly.

I do believe we are in a slightly different wavelength. I'm not on the "cleanup crew". I'm mostly on "prevention", and also "hate to say I told you so but why the hell didn't you listen when things were still preventable?!?" for the kicks. Maybe a tad childish, but I feel learning is mandatory - if not with love and respect, then with pain and humiliation. It's everybody's personal choice.

Fukushima was completely man-made accident. Those responsible for not letting this happen again (yes, AGAIN) did not do their jobs. Accident was not "souteigai", or "unimaginable" as Tepco put it. Their responsibilities were few and light (I would know), and still they failed. This is beyond pathetic, it is criminal.

I encourage freedom for extreme protection, because it is not only human, it also gives focus to the above mentioned fact, and reaction may help prevent further occurrence. Maybe those things read statistics, without any concept of the underlying simplifications, such as the elevated radiation would be conveniently evenly spread across the prefecture and not in the food chain, as is NOT the reality. Some places are quite normal, whereas others are radiation hot spots capable of creating quite measurable damage. There is no mechanism, no rule to prevent these hot spots being in i.e. school grounds or cattle feeding grounds (nope, did not take those examples out of thin air, as everyone reading newspapers know).

Falling into self-righteouss bliss in the cover of statistics and do nothing? I think not. Statistics are not designed to help victims. Explaining paths how radiation gets into one's system helps victims. If they decide it's time to go or time to buy imported food, then letting that happen is the way to help.

No, I have no radiation victims (nor statistics victims) close, and I intend to keep it so. And yes, you used propaganda technique called Appeal to Authority. I consent it may have been accidental.

oh specialist!!!
Isn't there recommended thesis that has gone out to the thesis data base etc. because the newspaper article has gotten tired?

Unfortunately I have no papers to recommend, as the practical side is not scientific in nature, but technical (or procedural) and the ones I used were not in English. Tech papers are generally localized in manuals, not so much widely distributed. You might find some with search words "radioactive fallout". But you must not make assumptions on scale, instead read many articles and just look for the common points.

If you track the path of the radioactive particle from the source with weather models, you quickly realize that dust is bad. Direct radiation is not a problem unless you're near, and even then you'd probably know it from all the wreckage and warning signs (and rude men yelling incoherently in space costumes and pushing you away). After that it's just a question of keeping very clean, which I already said, is a good advice anyway. Local water supplies usually get contaminated via rainfall (like the Tokyo 23区+5市 contamination), so that won't creep up on you if you can track the air currents. Food producers who lie about the origin of the food is another problem.

Information that I want it:(

*Influence on human body by external radiation exposure
(Late-phase response & Data of person who is actually exposed to radiation)

*Data when internal is exposed to radiation
(Emission rate to passage of time & residual quantity)

A lot of scholars are sending information by "Blog" and "twitter." now.
(The scholar from whom the capital is assisted to the mass communication and the power company disregards we Japanese.)
The scholar who is selling a negligent thesis for news also excludes it.

I want further data a little more because it has gotten tired of the check on the resource. ｡･ﾟ･(ﾉД`)･ﾟ･｡

I feel your pain, bro'. I'm sorry to say the only shortcut I've encountered that says "douzo" to your questions is an iPhone application called "Japan Crisis HD Free". There are lots of apps popping out in App Store with the search word "radiation", but iThingie is required for all of those. Anybody know any emulators? Anyway, this might be a good excuse to get iHooked. :happypika:

The app describes radiation poisoning symptoms in detail, and does not overdo the remedies and treatment (i.e. basically says "go see a doctor"), but by reading you get the idea that there is medicine, so all is not lost if you get some symptoms. Didn't find it mentioned in the app, but common sense says you might get the same symptoms without radiation poisoning, too...