Japanese monkeys' abnormal blood linked to Fukushima disaster - study

[bananas]

Source: Guardian

Wild monkeys in the Fukushima region of Japan have blood abnormalities linked to the radioactive fall-out from the 2011 nuclear power plant disaster, according to a new scientific study that may help increase the understanding of radiation on human health.

The Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata) were found to have low white and red blood cell levels and low haemoglobin, which the researchers say could make them more prone to infectious diseases.

<snip>

“This first data from non-human primates — the closest taxonomic relatives of humans — should make a notable contribution to future research on the health effects of radiation exposure in humans,” he said. The work, which ruled out disease or malnutrition as a cause of the low blood counts, is published in the peer-reviewed journal Scientific Reports.

White blood cell counts were lowest for immature monkeys with the highest caesium concentrations, suggesting younger monkeys may be more vulnerable to radioactive contamination. Hayama noted: “Abnormalities such as a decreased blood cell count in people living in contaminated areas have been reported from Chernobyl as a long-term effect of low-dose radiation exposure.” But other blood measures did not correlate with caesium levels, which vary with the seasons.

<snip>

Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jul/24/japanese-monkeys-abnormal-blood-linked-to-fukushima-disaster-study?CMP=twt_gu

[bananas]

1. Low blood cell counts in wild Japanese monkeys after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster

http://www.nature.com/srep/2014/140724/srep05793/full/srep05793.html

Low blood cell counts in wild Japanese monkeys after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster

Published 24 July 2014

In April 2012 we carried out a 1-year hematological study on a population of wild Japanese monkeys inhabiting the forest area of Fukushima City. This area is located 70 km from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (NPP), which released a large amount of radioactive material into the environment following the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011. For comparison, we examined monkeys inhabiting the Shimokita Peninsula in Aomori Prefecture, located approximately 400 km from the NPP. Total muscle cesium concentration in Fukushima monkeys was in the range of 78–1778 Bq/kg, whereas the level of cesium was below the detection limit in all Shimokita monkeys. Compared with Shimokita monkeys, Fukushima monkeys had significantly low white and red blood cell counts, hemoglobin, and hematocrit, and the white blood cell count in immature monkeys showed a significant negative correlation with muscle cesium concentration. These results suggest that the exposure to some form of radioactive material contributed to hematological changes in Fukushima monkeys.

<snip>

[closeupready]

2. Science! Woo crap, again - radiation's invisible! Bad sources.

No peer-reviewed published studies. Why do you want acid rain/more dirty air? GLOBAL WARMING!!!11! (did I hit all the predictably fallacious pro-nuke retorts here? )

[Mnemosyne]

6. Bananas, air travel and potato chips have more radiation.

[nikto]

8. Please see my oh-so-serious "examples" below

[Trillo]

3. Reminiscent of AIDS. NT

[sdfernando]

4. and once again nature is suffering

at the hands of human caused disaster.

I understand the need to study the effects...but I also mourn for these innocent victims of man's shortsightedness.

[navarth]

5. that's what we humans do

we take down the innocent with us. this, perhaps, is our greatest sin.

[nikto]

7. This can't be true--Nuke Radiation is GOOd 4 U

Also, as nuke industry shills will tell you...


*1 banana contains 489 Chernobyls and 339 Fukushimas.

*1 kumquat contains 56 Hiroshimas.

Why aren't we screaming about that?






















*(OK, probably not accurate, but if these "examples" help the Nuke indu$try, go with it)

[Mnemosyne]

9. Insane, isn't it? nt

[nikto]

16. More and more, my response to craziness is to...

Go with it and glorify it to-the-max, in the best Colbert tradition.





Every banana contains the potential for 6,000 megatons of hydrogen bombs.
In comparison, nuke meltdowns are no big deal.

[Mnemosyne]

18. I like your style, nikto! Wish I could think that quickly.

[nilram]

21. mmm, kumquats

[DeSwiss]

10. K&R

A Tokyo doctor who has moved to western Japan urges fellow doctors to promote radiation protection

Dr. Shigeru Mita’s essay published in the newsletter of Association of Doctors in Kodaira (Tokyo), translated by WNSCR, July 16, 2014:

Why did I leave Tokyo?
Shigeru Mita ( Mita clinic)

To my fellow doctors,

I closed the clinic in March 2014, which had served the community of Kodaira for more than 50 years, since my father’s generation, and I have started a new Mita clinic in Okayama-city on April 21. I had been a member of the board of directors in the Kodaira medical association since the 1990’s, the time I started practicing medicine at my father’s clinic. For the last 10 years, I had worked to establish a disaster emergency response in the city.

In Tokyo, the first mission of the disaster response concerns how to deal with earthquakes. In the event of a South Eastern Earthquake, which is highly expectable, it is reasonable to assume a scenario of meltdown in the Hamaoka nuclear power plant in Shizuoka prefecture, followed by radiation contamination in Tokyo.

I have been worried about the possibility of radiation contamination in Tokyo, so I had repeatedly requested the medical association, the municipal government and the local public health department to stock medical iodine. However, every time my request was turned down; the reason given was that Tokyo did not expect such an event. Hence there was no plan for preparing for the event.

In the afternoon of March 11, 2011, Tokyo experienced slow but great motions in the earthquake. I thought, “now this is what’s called long-period seismic motions. The South Eastern Sea earthquake, with the following Hamaoka NPP accident, are finally coming”. Instead, the source of the earthquake was in Tohoku. The temperature of the reactors in Fukushima Daiichi NPP rose and it caused massive explosions, followed by meltdowns and melt-through. It is clear that Eastern Japan and Metropolitan Tokyo have been contaminated with radiation.

MORE

[bananas]

14. Noam Chomsly, last year

Same website you linked to.

One minute message:
Noam Chomsky on a matter of urgency for the children of Fukushima and Miyagi
http://www.democraticunderground.com/112746088

40 minute interview:
New! Noam Chomsky interview: the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster - June 1 2013
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1017122764

[DeSwiss]

19. The Japanese leaders.....

...are faced with the extinction of their people and culture or, to take actions that are an admission that nuclear power cannot be used there. It would appear that they have chosen the former while the people politely and respectfully disagree.

- Too politely and too respectful for me.....

[Uncle Joe]

11. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, bananas.

[greatlaurel]

12. K&R

Thanks for the link.

[Sunlei]

13. what about the thyroids?

[Octafish]

15. Those monkeys could have gotten sick from atomic tests in the 1950s.

What else could it be?

[nikto]

17. The monkeys couldn't have gotten radiation from little old Fukushima...

Last edited Sat Aug 2, 2014, 04:12 AM - Edit history (1)

They must have gotten too close to Godzilla.


Yeah, that's the ticket.

[Octafish]

20. One DU Atomic Scientist said there's nothing to worry about when it comes to plutonium.

Which is also what TEPCO said.

http://metamorphosis.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=5112929

What a coincidence.

[FBaggins]

22. Dishonest... as usual

Neither the "DU Atomic Scientist" nor Tepco ever said that "there's nothing to worry about when it comes to plutonium".

What both said was that there wasn't enough plutonium involved in the Fukushima incident to be a concern.

And, of course, both were correct. Despite multiple failed attempts on your part to dispute it... it remains true that there has only been one certain discovery of plutonium away from the reactors that can definitively be tied back to the meltdowns. Other measurements were consistent with the levels of plutonium that were already all over Japan before the earthquake/tsunami.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0021967314003288

Abstract

Long-term monitoring of Pu isotopes in seawater is required for assessing Pu contamination in the marine environment from the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant accident. In this study, we established an accurate and precise analytical method based on anion-exchange chromatography and SF-ICP-MS. This method was able to determine Pu isotopes in seawater samples with small volumes (20–60 L). The U decontamination factor was 3 × 107–1 × 108, which provided sufficient removal of interfering U from the seawater samples. The estimated limits of detection for 239Pu and 240Pu were 0.11 fg mL−1 and 0.08 fg mL−1, respectively, which corresponded to 0.01 mBq m−3 for 239Pu and 0.03 mBq m−3 for 240Pu when a 20 L volume of seawater was measured. We achieved good precision (2.9%) and accuracy (0.8%) for measurement of the 240Pu/239Pu atom ratio in the standard Pu solution with a 239Pu concentration of 11 fg mL−1 and 240Pu concentration of 2.7 fg mL−1. Seawater reference materials were used for the method validation and both the 239+240Pu activities and 240Pu/239Pu atom ratios agreed well with the expected values. Surface and bottom seawater samples collected off Fukushima in the western North Pacific since March 2011 were analyzed. Our results suggested that there was no significant variation of the Pu distribution in seawater in the investigated areas compared to the distribution before the accident.

[Octafish]

23. Who's dishonest, FBaggins? Plutonium's all over Honshu. Here's where I quoted TEPCO in the past.

Here's the quote from TEPCO you didn't bother to find:

&quot Plutonium) is not a health risk to humans," the company said. But it added, "Just in case, TEPCO will increase the monitoring of the nuclear plant grounds and the surrounding environment."

CNN, March 28, 2011

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/03/28/japan.nuclear.plutonium/?hpt=T2

As for the DU Scientist, there are many to chose from. Is this to what you refer?

http://metamorphosis.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=5112929

Either way, it shows your smear for what it is.

[FBaggins]

24. Thanks for proving my point

Hint... if you're going to try to rebut charges of dishonestly altering what people say to build your own strawmen... it helps to avoid doing it in the very post where you attempt to make that rebuttal.

Here's the quote from TEPCO you didn't bother to find:

&quot Plutonium) is not a health risk to humans,"

You can put it in an excerpt and put quotes around it... but it isn't what they said. It is, in fact, precisely the type of dishonesty that I was talking about. What they said was just what I've been saying to you when you post nonsense like the above "Plutonium's all over Honshu"

The answer is - Duh! There's been plutonium all over Honshu for almost seven decades. You might remember that a couple nuclear bombs were dropped on Japan (not to mention the fallout from literally thousands of nuclear weapons tests over the intervening decades)?

They say that the plutonium they found is not a health risk... and you dishonestly reword it to say that they're claiming that plutonium in general is just fine.

Arsenic is poisonous... it isn't good for you. Yet arsenic regularly shows up in drinking water supplies in very low levels. It would be dishonest to take a county statement that the arsenic found in your well (or in the county supply) was not a threat to your health... into a blanket statement that "arsenic is not a health risk to humans". The same is true for scores of dangerous substances. You simply can't take a statement that the amount in a given sample isn't dangerous to a blanket claim that the substance itself is not a health threat even in higher amounts.

At least... you can't do it honestly. Now... perhaps you aren't trying to lie to us... you've just been lying to yourself and don't realize it. If so... now's the time to stop.

As for the DU Scientist, there are many to chose from. Is this to what you refer?

That works for me. It is yet another example of you replying to the fact that (with the one exception), none of the plutonium found off-site has been traceable to Fukushima because the amounts were no higher than the plutonium that is already found all around the world... and the isotopic composition doesn't match what could be expected from Fukushima.

You take that simple statement and post a reply that essentially says "here's an example of plutonium that was found"... yet each and every one of those examples proves my point. None of them could be traced to Fukushima. Nor do the scientists ever expect to find any. Not because none was released, but because it was so tiny an amount that it drowns in the already-existing background levels. The one sample found on some leaves shortly after the event makes clear why we're unlikely to find any more... because the only reason they were able to distinguish it from the much higher background levels is because it fell onto a growing plant as fresh fallout.

Take another look at the link I gave above. They tested samples of water taken just off of Fukushima starting right after the meltdowns and progressing all the way to current samples... and even with incredibly tiny detection limits, they can't find plutonium attributable to Fukushima.

[Octafish]

25. You are wrong.

Novel Insights into Fukushima Nuclear Accident from Isotopic Evidence of Plutonium Spread along Coastal Rivers.

Evrard O1, Pointurier F, Onda Y, Chartin C, Hubert A, Lepage H, Pottin AC, Lefèvre I, Bonté P, Laceby JP, Ayrault S.

Abstract

The Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant (FDNPP) accident led to important releases of radionuclides into the environment, and trace levels of plutonium (Pu) were detected in northeastern Japan. However, measurements of Pu isotopic atom and activity ratios are required to differentiate between the contributions of global nuclear test fallout and FDNPP emissions. In this study, we used a double-focusing sector field ICP-MS to measure Pu atom and activity ratios in recently deposited sediment along rivers draining the most contaminated part of the inland radioactive plume. Results showed that plutonium isotopes (i.e., (239)Pu, (240)Pu, (241)Pu, and (242)Pu) were detected in all samples, although in extremely low concentrations. The (241)Pu/(239)Pu atom ratios measured in sediment deposits (0.0017-0.0884) were significantly higher than the corresponding values attributed to the global fallout (0.00113 ± 0.00008 on average for the Northern Hemisphere between 31°-71° N: Kelley, J. M.; Bond, L. A.; Beasley, T. M. Global distribution of Pu isotopes and (237)Np. Sci. Total. Env. 1999, 237/238, 483-500). The results indicated the presence of Pu from FDNPP, in slight excess compared to the Pu background from global fallout that represented up to ca. 60% of Pu in the analyzed samples. These results demonstrate that this radionuclide has been transported relatively long distances (∼45 km) from FDNPP and been deposited in rivers representing a potential source of Pu to the ocean. In future, the high (241)Pu/(239)Pu atom ratio of the Fukushima accident sourced-Pu should be measured to quantify the supply of continental-originating material from Fukushima Prefecture to the Pacific Ocean.
PMID: 25014620 [PubMed - in process]

SOURCE: Environ Sci Technol. 2014 Aug 19;48(16) 334-40. doi: 10.1021/es501890n. Epub 2014 Jul 23.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25014620

[FBaggins]

26. Am I?

I still don't see anything supporting your initial strawman. Did you paste the wrong thing?

But let's take a look at what you did post. Did you actually read it? Because it firmly supports the notion that the amount of plutonium released from Fukushima is far too tiny to present a threat.

At best, I'm "wrong" that there's only one example of clearly fukushima-related plutonium discovered. Big deal... as before, it's the exception that proved the rule. That is... it again demonstrates that the amount released was so tiny compared to the amount already in the environment that they need very special circumstances even to detect it (in this case, cleverly looking at places like recent sedimentary deposits) where the recent contamination would wash. You may very well find other examples, but they'll all tell the same story... the amount of new plutonium in the environment was negligible compared to plutonium that has been there for decades.

Let's take a look at other studies from the same source since you must now accept it as authoritative:

Release of pu isotopes from the fukushima daiichi nuclear power plant accident to the marine environment was negligible.

Abstract

Atmospheric deposition of Pu isotopes from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (FDNPP) accident has been observed in the terrestrial environment around the FDNPP site; however, their deposition in the marine environment has not been studied. The possible contamination of Pu in the marine environment has attracted great scientific and public concern. To fully understand this possible contamination of Pu isotopes from the FDNPP accident to the marine environment, we collected marine sediment core samples within the 30 km zone around the FDNPP site in the western North Pacific about two years after the accident. Pu isotopes ((239)Pu, (240)Pu, and (241)Pu) and radiocesium isotopes ((134)Cs and (137)Cs) in the samples were determined. The high activities of radiocesium and the (134)Cs/(137)Cs activity ratios with values around 1 (decay corrected to 15 March 2011) suggested that these samples were contaminated by the FDNPP accident-released radionuclides. However, the activities of (239+240)Pu and (241)Pu were low compared with the background level before the FDNPP accident. The Pu atom ratios ((240)Pu/(239)Pu and (241)Pu/(239)Pu) suggested that global fallout and the pacific proving ground (PPG) close-in fallout are the main sources for Pu contamination in the marine sediments. As Pu isotopes are particle-reactive and they can be easily incorporated with the marine sediments, we concluded that the release of Pu isotopes from the FDNPP accident to the marine environment was negligible.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25050458

Release of plutonium isotopes into the environment from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident: what is known and what needs to be known.

Abstract


The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (FDNPP) accident has caused serious contamination in the environment. The release of Pu isotopes renewed considerable public concern because they present a large risk for internal radiation exposure. In this Critical Review, we summarize and analyze published studies related to the release of Pu from the FDNPP accident based on environmental sample analyses and the ORIGEN model simulations. Our analysis emphasizes the environmental distribution of released Pu isotopes, information on Pu isotopic composition for source identification of Pu releases in the FDNPP-damaged reactors or spent fuel pools, and estimation of the amounts of Pu isotopes released from the FDNPP accident. Our analysis indicates that a trace amount of Pu isotopes (∼2 × 10(-5)% of core inventory) was released into the environment from the damaged reactors but not from the spent fuel pools located in the reactor buildings. Regarding the possible Pu contamination in the marine environment, limited studies suggest that no extra Pu input from the FDNPP accident could be detected in the western North Pacific 30 km off the Fukushima coast. Finally, we identified knowledge gaps remained on the release of Pu into the environment and recommended issues for future studies.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23899337

[Octafish]

27. What you quoted shows you are wrong, FBaggins.

So, there's that.

[Octafish]

28. First, you keep moving the goalposts...

...no plutonium...little bit from background...little bit from Fukushima.

Hold that thought and then remember:

TEPCO, the government of Japan and the government of the United States have not been forthcoming with research. There is little, if any public research, funded by these entities. Japan has even gone so far as to censoring news about Fukushima. Since 9/11, the USA, likewise has censored and manipulated news.

Here's the main reason why you are wrong and I am correct on Fukushima: With little or no science, I'll err on the side of caution when it comes to plutonium. For some strange reason, you enjoy wasting my time to prove the obvious.

[RobertEarl]

29. Hey Octa, you ever wonder...

Last edited Wed Sep 10, 2014, 03:53 AM - Edit history (1)

Maybe Baggins is actually an undercover anti-nuke?

He is always wrong, so it kind of makes sense he is in deep cover, in that he is here on DU to make sure the truth gets out via debates with you. Like he prods you to produce the truth and tell the whole story?

Hey, I'm just trying to make some sense of why he keeps on and on being wrong about nukes. He being counter-intelligence with his counter-intelligent words about nukes, and ending up making nukes look worse than he bags them up to be, has been of fair service to the anti-nuke movement, indeed.