Japan, Radiation and the iodine fairy tale

News Flash 19.3.11 Japan, Radiation and the iodine fairy tale

(sent to you via email from newsletter@infoholix.net)

Hi,

After one year of operation, a commercial nuclear reactor contains 1000 times as much radioactivity as was released by the bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

From a public health perspective, the most important isotopes are iodine (like Iodine-131), Cesium-137, Strontium-90, and Plutonium-239.  Radioactive iodine caused thousands of cases of thyroid cancer in children after the Chernobyl accident and more than hundred thousand that are not officially attributed to Chernobyl as they occur outside the officially affected area. The affects are ongoing, after 25 years incident rates of cancer are climbing.

Cesium and strontium cause a number of different kinds of cancer and remain dangerous for hundreds of years, strontium combines with calcium and destroys your bones, plutonium causes lung cancer as well as other types of cancer and remains deadly for hundreds of thousands of years.

One atom is enough to destroy a cell in the way described below and lead to clusters of cancerous cell. A plutoninium atom reamains active in your physical body for about half a million years. When your body is six feet down under it is still active and cremation sets it free and may possible hit another still walking body.

Iodine supplements lull you into a false sense of security. Amazingly many of those who have dashed for iodine supplements are willing to subject themselves to iodine and gadolinium based contrast agents in MRI scans. They allow highly radioactive substances to pass through their bodies and expect no damage.

It seems to be easy to shower people with phrases like “scientific” and “low level radiation is good for you, or at least harmless”. Only recently the Japanese Ministry of Health campaigned for breast mammography claiming “….no more radiation than the natural radiation absorbed on a train ride from Tokyo to Osaka”. There is Radon Therapy in Japan, people bathe in radiated water. I couldn´t be convinced of its benefits and rejected to feature it in the directory of infoholix.net.

What are your chances of becoming a victim of radiation?

There are 443 nuclear power stations in operation worldwide and 62 are under construction.
The most prominent locations:

USA: 104 + 2 under construction.

Russia: 32 + 10

Japan: 55 + 2

South Korea: 21 + 5

China: 13 + 27

India: 20 + 5

Pakistan: 2 + 1

all the above are in earthquake zones,
add the Western Europeans

France: 58 + 1
UK: 19
Germany: 17 (of which 7 are in the process of being shut down this week)
Spain: 8
Belgium: 7
Sweden: 10

and the Eastern Europeans

Ukraine: 15 + 2
Czech Rep: 6
Slovakia: 4 + 2
Hungary: 4
Romania: 2
Bulgaria: 2 + 2

After Three Mile Island the industry calculated an accident level 7 rate (melt down) of no more than 0.1%/decade = half a reactor in 10 years resulting in no more than 100.000 casualties which is a fraction of casualties from medical radiation, hence this figure found worlwide acceptance. (e.g. accepted calculated mortality rate for CT scans is 1 in 1000)

Chernobyl figures were adjusted to fall within predictions. Chernobyl taught important lessons:
a. it is imperative to control the media
b. reporting system to the IAEA and subsequent truth adjustment must reassure the public that “nuclear is save” and spin added “nuclear is green”.

This worked brilliantly throughout the ´90s and the first ten years of this century.
Accidents (over 3500 in over 400 plants) never caused the public any concern and luckyly there were no further meltdowns).

No scientist who established a correlation between radiation outfall and soaring cancer rates ever got published in a way that caused headlines.

Some 200 new forms of cancer exist today that did not exist in the thirties when Otto Warburg scientifically documented the causes of cancer and picked up the Nobel in 1931 and would have got a further Nobel in 1944 had Hitler not interfered.

I certainly do not want to blame radiation for all new forms of cancer, chemicals can attack cells in a similar fashion to radiation. Mustard gas in WWI showed this, it formed the basis for todays chemotherapy. Hitler developed this in his medical establishments of Auschwitz and the likes, but he can´t take the blame for radiotherapy.

Just as amazing is the green spin on nuclear energy. Uranium enrichment produces CFC gases which were banned in the Montreal agreement. The US produces 88% of all CFC this way, and the world remains silent as they all need fuel for their reactors. The media appears to be under perfect control.

You may take your iodine supplements and feel good about it. You may also conclude that most areas of the Northern Globe are no longer fit for human inhabitation. You may trust your government and the sources it draws its information from about “exclusion zones” and become a calculated casualty statistic.

In some “developed” countries a third of the population gets cancer already, up from under 2% some 70 years ago. This is expected to rise to 50%.

Can one really deny the correlation between cancer and nuclear power?

Cancer incidences on the Southern Globe are minimal in comparison, there are 2 nuclear power stations each in Brazil, Argentina and South Africa. This makes it six out of 443.

Do we really want to live with the uncertainty or statistical certainty that the next meltdown is going to happen? No matter which one of those 443 will be it, we´ll be all affected and who is to say that there won´t be multiple meltdowns at the same time.

German Police issued a statement yesterday saying that reactors cannot be protected against terror attacks. This kind of statement would have been unthinkable a week ago, the media did not ask the question, the public did not either and politicians were obviously not interested in this issue.  “Nuclear power is save and clean” is all that matters. Just think about the 2 in Pakistan, a war zone by all means.

Let´s assume these get blown up. The perpetrators will justify their action just as the US justified Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Wars and killings are always justified by those who benefit.

There is a philosophy that says “there exist two reasons only why you get attacked by the US, one, you are not able to defend yourself and two, you are not able to retaliate”. Imagine the next US target has the ability to blow up a few reactors in the US in retaliation. A meltdown in one of the 23 old models that are identical to the ones in Fukushima will require an exclusion zone of some 500 miles minimum in diameter, depending on what mSv levels you set as standard.  This is the issue of Fukushima and Japan now. There is no such thing as a save level as I have explained below. So what will Japan do? Abandon Tokyo and many other cities for the sake of public health?

Or declare new safty standards based on quickly constructed “science” and accept cancer incidences for the future of a US level?

A few thousand Japanese left Japan in the thirties and settled in La Colmena in Paraguay. This settlement is still florishing today.

There are times when one may reconsider the kind of lifestyle one leads and contemplate a healthy and sustainable option.

Saturday Night update:

Chernobyl:
The exclusion zone around Chernobyl measures about 65 by 65 kilometers.
The “safe confinement steel structure” required urgent repairs in 2004 and 2006 to prevent collapse. The costs of 50 million Euros were published, radiation leaks are not, neither in quantity nor quality.

The new “safe confinement” to be completed in 2020 measures 250 x 150 m and 105 m in height. The costs are estimated to exceed 1.6bn Euros. It will last for about 30 years. This is the legacy we leave to our children.

By 2020 we will have had 34 years of constant leakage contaminating agricultural land, the Ukraine used to be called “grain chamber of Europe”. Foods produced on these lands contaminate people and animals that enter the food chain. Plutonium does not distinguish between organic and industrial food.

Measurements are constantly taken and appear to influence politicians in ways that “safety levels” are being revised to what is politically/economically acceptable. If you were to apply standards that say “no more than one mSv through environment and food” you would have to establish an exclusion zone of 2.000 x 2.000 km, reaching far into Russia, Poland, Romania, Turkey and many more countries. Many doctors of the IPPNW (International Physicians Prevention Nuclear War) who take their own measurement will consider this size to be “reasonably safe” but still not safe.

The fairy tale of iodine and other methods of “protection”:
When you are surrounded by guys who fire at you you´ll instictively try to dodge bullets and get some kind of cover. Fine, but you know it won´t help. The only way to protect yourself is to eliminate those who shoot at you. Hence I´m not advocating any form of medical protection that creates the wrong impression – a false sense of security – a fatal believe that you can protect yourself against radiation.

Imagine:  The people of Europe, US and Japan walk out of their countries and settle on the Southern Globe. These people say “Thank you governments, but we´ve had enough, we´ll come back if and when the environment is safe”.

If only 10% start walking it will have a dramatic effect on economies, recession, drop in demand of everything.

If 20% start walking there will be no finance left for wars, nuclear weapons and nuclear power stations.

If 30% start walking there will be no consumers left for nuclear power. The whole lot of French power stations can be shut down and France supplied via the EU-grid. Japan needs to be evacuated anyway and a small remaining population supplied with food from elsewhere. Once the US population learns why they are holding world records in all diseases – heart – cancer – diabetes, you name it and they have the world´s highest incidence rates of any “incurable” disease. Once they learn about their levels of depleted uranium – leaking reactors and reactor burnt fuel storage facilities and uranium enrichment plants – they´ll start walking for sure, provided they still can walk after eating GMO foods for years and drinking fluorided water that Hitler used to create calmed and dociled prisoners.

If 99% of East Germans start walking …….aaaah, if I remember right this has happened already in 1989.