International   

Radioactive traces in food

PHOTO : AFP

Honami Abe meets again her dog Toto at Minamisanriku town in Miyagi on Saturday after they were seperated by the earthquake and tsunami that hit northern Japan.

SINGAPORE: Japan on Saturday confirmed the radioactive contamination of food products in areas around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant which was knocked out by the March 11 temblor and tsunami. However, Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said in Tokyo that “these detected levels of radiation would not affect the health of consumers”.

In a separate statement, the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said Japan had “confirmed the presence of radioactive iodine in food products” from the Fukushima area. About the possible hazards, the IAEA said: “Though radioactive iodine has a short half-life of about eight days and decays naturally within a matter of weeks, there is a short-term risk to human health if radioactive iodine in food is absorbed into the human body.”

Two “critical” remedial measures were, however, being adopted by the Japanese authorities, said the IAEA. First, “Japan's Nuclear Safety Commission recommended to the local authorities to instruct the evacuees leaving the 20-kilometre area [around the Fukushima nuclear power plant] to ingest stable (not radioactive) iodine.” Residents of that area were earlier asked to leave for safer places. Secondly, Japan had now ordered a stoppage of the sale of all food products from the Fukushima Prefecture, the IAEA noted.

In his earlier comments in Tokyo, Mr. Edano, while playing down the concerns over radioactive contamination of food, said a ban on the transportation of such products to other places from Fukushima would be “considered, if necessary”.

In a political initiative, amid the continuing civil-nuclear emergency, Prime Minister Naoto Kan on Saturday sought to constitute a national government by offering opposition leader Sadakazu Tanigaki the posts of vice-prime-minister and minister in charge of disaster management. However, Mr. Tanigaki was later reported to have turned down the offer, although this could not be independently confirmed immediately.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

Qadhafi strikes Benghazi
‘To my Dear Obama, our son'
Radioactive traces in food
Low radiation reaches U.S.
Bahrain King pledges reform
Residents flee from battle
Benzema in his best form
I didn't meet Moriarty on January 10: Hasina adviser
Indian school in Tokyo closed for now

Copyright © 2011, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu