- The Low Level Radiation Campaign (LLRC) http://www.llrc.org/index.html
is advising people in Japan to take control of health research
in the Fukushima 5000 study http://www.llrc.org/fukucitizenepidemiology.htm
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- As we predicted from the beginning of the Fukushima disaster,
officials are saying that the long-term impact on human health will not
be serious. This is the beginning of a long-term cover-up intended to deny
citizens legal redress for the failure of the Government's and Tepco's
duty of care.
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- We advise recruiting a study group of 5000 people living
in a contaminated area. This should begin as soon as possible; a questionnaire
survey of their health using the same questionnaire to survey their health
in 2014 and again in 2016. is a report on the method, including a draft
questionnaire Official reassurance is false
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- officials continue to believe in the invalid risk model
of the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP). ICRP
massively underestimates the effects of radioactivity inside the body because
its model is based on studies of Atom-bomb survivors at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
These studies are silent on the effects of internal radiation; they didn't
begin to collect data until 1950, and they excluded data collected earlier;
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- · official sources are silent about alpha-emitting
radionuclides like Uranium and Plutonium which are the types of internal
contaminant for which the ICRP model is most inaccurate;
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- · officials ignore the vast amount of
evidence from Chernobyl and other exposure scenarios that shows far greater
danger than ICRP predicts, affecting a wider range of diseases, occurring
sooner than expected, and not conforming with the ICRP's external dose
model.
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- Chernobyl teaches us the importance of taking control
early
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- Official studies will start late; they will be underfunded,
and they will be designed not to produce clear results.
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- Officials will insist on dose reconstruction. This jargon
means that the radiation dose received by each individual person must be
known before any conclusions can be reached about whether their health
has been damaged by the radioactive contamination; Chernobyl teaches that
this is difficult and often impossible and the ICRP itself has said its
model cannot and should not be used in this way because of the large uncertainties.
It is known that "dose" is meaningless for many types of internal
exposure but officials will nonetheless assume that there must be a strict
linear relationship between dose and disease.
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- Officials will assume that radioactive contamination
can only cause a narrow range of diseases - cancer, leukaemia and heritable
genetic effects. They will therefore ignore non-cancer effects like still
births and congenital defects arising from in utero irradiation. They will
claim these conditions are illusory or psychosomatic and that they are
caused by despair, anxiety, radio-phobia and life-style factors such as
poor diet and substance abuse.
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- Officials will assume that cancers diagnosed in the first
10 - 15 years cannot have been caused by the exposure.
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- In 2004 the Swedish radiation protection agency SSI used
these arguments when attacking a study [1] that showed increased cancer
within ten years of Chernobyl. The SSI page is here [retrieved June 4 2011].
The absolutely standard official response to evidence that challenges the
ICRP risk model is to rely on the risk model itself. It's more like religion
than science.
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- 3. The future: a simple proposal (extract from the Fukushima
5000 report)
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- It is proposed that a case-control study of 1000 households
is carried out in a town or small area just outside the 30 km radius from
the Fukushima nuclear site. This will be carried out in the same way as
the Fallujah study (Busby et al 2010). It will involve a team of local
people defining an area of roughly 1000 houses identified from electoral
records and visiting each house to obtain answers to a questionnaire. This
questionnaire will ask who lives at the house, what their ages and sexes
are, and what cancers or leukemias have been diagnosed in the previous
5 years including the type of cancer, age and sex of the person and year
of diagnosis. In addition some questions about birth outcomes and miscarriages
in the household will be asked. It will also obtain details of deaths from
all causes.
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- Results will give a population of about 5000 people of
all ages. The questionnaire will be coded to the householder or responder
who will leave an identification number and details of how they can be
contacted for a second questionnaire in 3 years and 5 years time. Thus
a baseline health sample will be defined against which future health effects
can be gauged. The report includes a sample questionnaire.
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- [1] Tondel M, Hjalmarsson P, Hardell L, Carisson G and
Axelson A (2004) Increase in regional total cancer incidence in Northern
Sweden. J Epidemiol. Community Health. 58 1011-10.
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