Report: Infant Girls Exposed to Most-Contaminated Fukushima Area Face 70% Higher Risk Thyroid Cancer

[FBaggins]

13. With numbers that small... why be "horrified"?

You probably "double your risk" of dying falling down your stairs by taking your shoes off... you probably increase it tenfold or more by walking down the stairs in the dark. You more than double your risk of brake failure leading to a fatal crash whn you only check your breaks once a year.

Does anyone get "horrified" when they take these risks?

Based on how conservative they were in their estimates, there probably aren't many infant girls with that level of exposure. There's a pretty good statistical chance that not a single extra case of thyroid cancer will result at that level. At what point does the horror subside?

The ironic thing is that if you ask a specialist, she'll tell you that LOTS of people have thyroid cancer and don't even know it. More than one study done through autopsy has shown a MUCH higher rate of lifetime thyroid cancer than previously assumed - and the people never knew it because it had no effect on them. There have already been as many as ten kids in Fukushima who had thyroid cancers caught by screening that they never would have received otherwise.