[ExI] Radiation danger (was: sendup of Hobby Lobby)

[John Clark]

On Jul 15, 2014, at 2:39 PM, BillK wrote:

> Is Japan lying to their population about radioactive contamination?
>

Yes, although not as extensively as the USSR lied to its people after
Chernobyl.

> Because it is too bad to fix and it won't become apparent for 30 years or
> so
>

We can get a pretty good idea of what to expect at Fukushima by looking at
Chernobyl which happened 28 years ago and was much worst than Fukushima. By
far the most serious cancer related issue regarding Chernobyl was an
additional 4000 cases of thyroid cancer that showed up very soon among
children living near the plant. Fortunately thyroid cancer is one of the
more easily treated cancers so out of the 4000 only 10 died.  And the
number of thyroid cancers could have been zero if the government had simply
given dirt cheap Iodine pills to the children in the area within 4 hours of
the accident, but it was days before the USSR told the world that a
accident had occurred at all and it took days for them to stop telling the
people that lived near the plant that the explosion and fire they saw was
more than just a minor irregularity. There will be no increase in thyroid
cancer at  Fukushima, if there were we'd see it by now, and that is not
surprising because although the Japanese government lied it didn't do so
anywhere near as egregiously as the USSR did.

Other than the thyroid cancers a UN panel could find no increase in cancer,
or increase in birth defects or infertility problems; however it did find a
big increase in psychological problems caused by the widespread terror of
radiation.

  John K Clark
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