Scientists Link Spike in Thyroid Disease to Fukushima Disaster

[Demeter]

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=11203

...Well, not only do we know that the radiation has come here and that the greatest amounts were on the West Coast, but we also know in general that the people that are most susceptible to radiation exposure are the very young--the fetus, the infant, and the young child. A dose to an adult would not nearly be as harmful as the same dose to a fetus or a newborn. We also know that the thyroid gland is extremely susceptible to radiation. The thyroid gland is a gland--looks like a butterfly kind of wrapped around the throat. One of the chemicals that's in that radioactive mix is radioactive iodine. And when you ingest iodine, it goes immediately from the stomach to the bloodstream to the thyroid gland, where it attacks and kills cells.

So at the time we started the article, really the only data from 2011 that we had was on newborns with hypothyroidism. Every baby in this state, in this country, every newborn baby is tested for certain diseases, one of which is hypothyroidism. And we looked at California, which, of course, is the most populated state, and we looked at the changes in the rates of hypothyroidism for the nine months after Fukushima compared to the previous year, and we found a 26 percent increase in the rate of hypothyroidism... There are very few other known causes of hypothyroidism other than exposure to radioactive iodine, and the same thing for the thyroid cancer as well, which iodine also raises the risk of, things like diet, you know, not enough iodine, nonradioactive, in the diet. But that doesn't occur in the U.S. It's mostly in Third World countries. Other things, like whether it runs in one's family and so on. As far as a real reason--oh, and history of hypo--of a thyroid disease, which doesn't occur in newborns. They're newborn. Really, this is it....the doses in Japan are hundreds, thousands of times higher than they were on the West Coast. Unfortunately, there have really been no studies in Japan except for one, and that is one that's being done by the Fukushima Medical University. They haven't looked at hypothyroidism, but what they've done is this: they have taken 200,000 children under age 18 who live relatively close to Fukushima, and they tested for two things. The first they tested for was thyroid cancer. And they have found up to 59 children have thyroid cancer. In a normal population, it's very rare in children. In a normal--we would expect one or two. They have 59.

Second thing that they found is they through ultrasound look at the child's thyroid gland for precancerous lumps, you know, what they call cysts and nodules. And so far, 56 percent of children near Fukushima do in fact have a precancerous cyst or a nodule. And every year it gets higher--two years ago, 35 percent, last year 45 percent, this year 56 percent. Pretty soon we're going to find that almost every child in the area has a precancerous growth on their thyroid gland. And that is--to me that is a powerful statement about how dangerous this meltdown has been... Yes, of course the radiation gets diluted. It's most intense closest to Fukushima when it goes into the Pacific Ocean. And as it goes, you know, miles and miles, it gets more diluted. However, it does not mean that that radiation does not pose a health risk. All radiation poses a health risk, even at relatively low doses. And that's what we believe is happening in the West Coast right now, because it keeps coming and coming.

The other thing is that all these statements about the radiation is harmless is premature because the reactors are still not under control. They are still leaking. They are still spewing out these terrible poisons. Even a meltdown like Chernobyl in 1986, which again went around--like Fukushima, went around the globe and caused many, many people to become sick and die, it was over after a few weeks. They were able to dump dirt and sand and salt on the reactor and put a sarcophagus over it. Fukushima is still giving out radiation. It's still not under control. And that's almost three years later. And that--so any statement on health, especially that it doesn't pose risk, is very premature and really a disappointment that any official would say that.

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