Background: Information you can use

[Update]

Dr. Busby has done a nice video on the impact of radioactive Cesium on all people but especially small children.

This is Nika, I am helping Iori with this very important blog on Fukushima.

Much has been said in the media about the technical aspects of nuclear power, Fukushima, etc.

We are now beginning to hear about people getting sick.

This new category of posts will provide verified and – where possible – peer reviewed information on the effects of both chronic low and high dose radiation on the body. Other topics may arise when needed.

The past few days both unconfirmed reports and published reports have been pointing to acute onset cardiac arrest in previously healthy young people in Japan.

I am going to provide links to a relevant scientific paper here.

A Model of Cardiovascular Disease Giving a Plausible Mechanism for the Effect of Fractionated Low-Dose Ionizing Radiation Exposure

Mark P. Little, Anna Gola, Ioanna Tzoulaki
Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom

Abstract

Atherosclerosis is the main cause of coronary heart disease and stroke, the two major causes of death in developed society. There is emerging evidence of excess risk of cardiovascular disease at low radiation doses in various occupationally exposed groups receiving small daily radiation doses. Assuming that they are causal, the mechanisms for effects of chronic fractionated radiation exposures on cardiovascular disease are unclear. We outline a spatial reaction-diffusion model for atherosclerosis and perform stability analysis, based wherever possible on human data. We show that a predicted consequence of multiple small radiation doses is to cause mean chemo-attractant (MCP-1) concentration to increase linearly with cumulative dose. The main driver for the increase in MCP-1 is monocyte death, and consequent reduction in MCP-1 degradation. The radiation-induced risks predicted by the model are quantitatively consistent with those observed in a number of occupationally-exposed groups. The changes in equilibrium MCP-1 concentrations with low density lipoprotein cholesterol concentration are also consistent with experimental and epidemiologic data. This proposed mechanism would be experimentally testable. If true, it also has substantive implications for radiological protection, which at present does not take cardiovascular disease into account. The Japanese A-bomb survivor data implies that cardiovascular disease and cancer mortality contribute similarly to radiogenic risk. The major uncertainty in assessing the low-dose risk of cardiovascular disease is the shape of the dose response relationship, which is unclear in the Japanese data. The analysis of the present paper suggests that linear extrapolation would be appropriate for this endpoint.

Fukushima: A Model of Cardiovascular Disease Giving a Plausible Mechanism for the Effect of Fractionated Lo…

  1. “Analysis of the Japanese atomic bomb survivor data implies that non-cancer disease mortality, in particular cardiovascular mortality, contributes almost equally as cancer mortality to the radiogenic excess risk [8].”

    “The major uncertainty in assessing the low-dose risk of cardiovascular disease is the shape of the dose response relationship, which is very unclear in the Japanese data [8,55].”

    “The analysis of the present paper suggests that linear extrapolation would be generally appropriate for this endpoint.”

    My takeaway on your social media posts; considered as independent events, like radiation testing in Japan, these social-media posts present anecdotal evidence which are converging into a similar outcome that quantitative physical testing suggests:

    radiation levels in certain areas are much higher than the posturing being made by officials suggest.

  2. I would have to agree with that! the fog of war is dense – the data leaks out in various states of degradation (some numbers reported dont have units, dates can be missing, etc) but over all and with time, the picture will being to resolve in ways that may be useful to some of us. – Nika

  3. Thanks for all of this real world info. It’s important to remember that Japanese citizens, as a rule, ordinarily have the longest life-spans in the world, with the lowest rates of cancer and heart disease! They are some of the healthiest people anywhere! With that in mind, it is all the more harrowing that some Japanese people have essentially dropped dead from cancer or heart conditions since the meltdowns began!…

  4. Maybe they aren’t so concerned about the impact of record levels of radiation because cancer is not prevalent in Japan?… i.e. They don’t know the magnitude or expense of what they may face??

    I grew up in a very polluted part of the United States (coal & chemical production valley)…Now I have to watch so many who stayed battle cancer…It’s sure real to me!!

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About this site

This website updates the latest news about the Fukushima nuclear plant and also archives the past news from 2011. Because it's always updated and added live, articles, categories and the tags are not necessarily fitted in the latest format.
I am the writer of this website. About page remains in 2014. This is because my memory about 311 was clearer than now, 2023, and I think it can have a historical value. Now I'm living in Romania with 3 cats as an independent data scientist.
Actually, nothing has progressed in the plant since 2011. We still don't even know what is going on inside. They must keep cooling the crippled reactors by water, but additionally groundwater keeps flowing into the reactor buildings from the broken parts. This is why highly contaminated water is always produced more than it can circulate. Tepco is planning to officially discharge this water to the Pacific but Tritium is still remaining in it. They dilute this with seawater so that it is legally safe, but scientifically the same amount of radioactive tritium is contained. They say it is safe to discharge, but none of them have drunk it.

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