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Sunday, March 9, 2014

U.S. AGENCIES REFUSE TO MONITOR INCOMING RADIATION

SOME OF OUR TOP SCIENTISTS ARE SCREAMING FOR TESTING ALONG THE WEST COAST AND IN THE PACIFIC WATERS, BUT NO ONE IN WASHINGTON WILL TAKE ON THAT RESPONSIBILITY.
THESE ARE TOP SCIENTISTS, OUR BEST, BUT THEIR PLEAS FALL ON DEAF EARS AND NO ONE IN OUR FEDERAL GOVERNMENT WANTS TO BE THE ONE TO BREAK IT TO THE AMERICAN PUBLIC THAT WE ARE SIMPLY "SCREWED". NO ONE WANTS TO BE THE AGENCY THAT FINALLY TELLS THE WORLD JUST HOW BAD, HOW SERIOUS THIS RADIATION FROM FUKUSHIMA HAS BEEN AND STILL IS AFTER 3 LONG YEARS. IS.REFUSING TO MONITOR OUR AIR, OUR WATER, OUR SOIL GOING TO CHANGE THE FACTS THAT WE'VE BEEN UNDER THAT NUCLEAR CLOUD FOR 3 YEARS?
WASHINGTON, THE PRESENT ADMINISTRATION, OUR CONGRESS ALL NEED TO JUST MAN THE HELL UP AND TELL US THE TRUTH...FOR ONCE.

Even with pressure from concerned scientists, physicians, residents, our federal government refuses to take responsibility for monitoring the west coast.


“Consuming food containing radionuclides is particularly dangerous. If an individual ingests or inhales a radioactive particle, it continues to irradiate the body as long as it remains radioactive and stays in the body,”said Alan H. Lockwood, MD, a member of the Board of Physicians for Social Responsibility.

TONS OF FUKUSHIMA RADIOACTIVE DEBRIS IS HITTING THE WEST COAST, BUT THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENT PASSES THE BUCK UNTIL THERE IS NO PLACE LEFT TO PASS IT TO.
WEST COAST RESIDENTS, AND INDEED ALL AMERICAN CITIZENS, ARE ON THEIR OWN, AS WE HAVE BEEN SINCE THE FUKUSHIMA NUCLEAR DISASTER.

Ken Buessler is the head scientist at Woods Hole in Massachusetts,  one of the world’s top ocean science institutions.  Much of Buessler’s career has focused on measuring radioactive particles in the ocean, and he’s been studying groundwater and ocean samples in and around Fukushima since the accident in March of 2011.
Buessler has consistently tried to downplay the risks from Fukushima, and yet even he admits that we won’t know unless we test.  Buessler noted this week:
IN AN INTERVIEW HE SAID:
 <<The predictions are rather low and are not of direct concern, but no one makes measurements of these isotopes along the [West] coast ...
No one is measuring so therefore we should be alarmed. I really try to take the approach that we shouldn’t trivialize the risks of radiation and shouldn’t be overly alarmed.
Buessler said last week:
What we don’t really know is how fast and how much is being transported across the Pacific. Yes, models tell us it will be safe, yes the levels we expect off the US West Coast and Canada we expect to be low, but we need measurements — especially now, as the plume begins to arrive along the West Coast and will actually increase in concentration over the next 1 to 2 years. Despite public concern about the levels, no public agency in the US is monitoring the activities in the Pacific.
Without careful, extensive, consistent monitoring, we’ll have no way of knowing how much radiation from Fukushima is reaching our shores, and how it could affect life in the ocean.>>

And:
Buesseler says no US government agency currently tests radiation levels in the Pacific Ocean.I don’t expect the radiation levels to be high but we can’t dismiss the concerns that the public has.”
“The effects of Fukushima will be increasing as the front edge of a large water plume coming from the nuclear plant will reach California soon and increase over the years,” said Buesseler.
Buesseler recently took his concerns to Washington where he met with US government officials at the various agencies responsible for monitoring radiation levels in air, food, and water.
He said he visited officials at the Department of Energy, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Environmental Protection Agency.
They all said that it’s not their responsibility to test the Pacific Ocean for radiation. This issue is falling between the cracks of government responsibility. It’s a health and safety issue here,” Buesseler said.
And Buesseler points out the circular reasoning which the government is using (at 10:00):
I completely agree that no radiation has been seen in the regards that we’re not really testing for it [laughter] in any organized way … We have very few data; it’s not really being organized. The government says we don’t really need to do that because we’re predicting very low levels.
This type of circular reasoning is – unfortunately – common these days. For example, when bad policy led to the 2008 financial crisis, the Gulf Oil spill, factory-farming caused disease, runaway pesticide use, and other problems, the government simply stopped testing or changed allowable levels.
U.C. Berkeley professor of nuclear engineering Eric Norman raises a similar point:
There is no systematic testing in the US of air, food, and water for radiation, continuous testing is needed”...

“I’m not terribly confident in the information Japan is sharing about the plant’s activities and clean up. That’s why it’s even more important now to advocate for continuous testing of air, food, and ocean water for radiation.”
University of Alaska Fairbanks researcher Doug Dasher notes:
<<There’s a lot of unknowns, a lot of uncertainties. There are others that also have the same message that they want to get out, we really need to sample to understand this and we really need to look at what’s happening out there in the ecosystem at the same time. There’s an opportunity to do this. It’s a huge amount of initial release, and the models do not address the continuing release [the models all assume that Fukushima was totally contained by about June 2011 ... in fact, it has leaked continuously hundreds of tons of radioactive water every day for more than 2/12 years]. Fukushima has continued to leak ….>>

<<You do have ships and programs going on that may be sampling marine waters for everything else but radionuclides, so you’re not necessarily directing that a ship has to go out solely at cost to sample for radionuclides...No concrete information to even delve into making a real judgment on any type of risk to the ecosystem...The information’s not out there.>>

(Dasher’s statement is even more dramatic given that he and other University of Alaska scientists think that Fukushima radiation might have caused Alaska’s seals to become sick.)

Cal. State Long Beach biology professor Steven Manley says:
People should know the amount of radioactive material in the kelp.

I think the amount will be small, but small doesn’t mean insignificant

It is imperative that we monitor this coastal forest for any radioactive contaminants that will be arriving this year in the ocean currents from Fukushima.
Steven Starr – Director of the Clinical Laboratory Science Program at the University of Missouri – says:
I read a very good study that was done at a big center in Australia and Spain. They predict that every cubic meter of water off the West Coast is going to have something like 10 to 20 atomic disintegrations per second from cesium in it over the next several years. That doesn’t sound like a lot I guess, but what we’ve also seen is that the stuff comes across the Pacific, some of it’s concentrated. It’s in pockets of it, the fish swim through that and they feed in it. It’s kind of a random process.
**
It’s kind of a crap-shoot really.
Some West Coast cities – such as Fairfax and Berkeley, California – have passed resolutions pleading for the federal and state governments to conduct tests.  But the feds and state governments are so far silent.
As nuclear expert Arnie Gundersen has been saying since the Fukushima accident occurred, we must demand that our elected representatives require testing.

PLEASE REALIZE ...
<<Many government officials have, unfortunately, fallen for voodoo science promoted by the nuclear industry that you get more radiation from eating bananas or from background radiation.  In the real world, however, Fukushima radiation is not comparable to bananas, and there was no background radiation in elements spewed by Fukushima – such as radioactive cesium or iodine – until nuclear bombs and nuclear accidents through them into the environment a few decades ago.>>

ONE READER OF THE TRANSCRIPTS COMMENTED:
<<Yes indeed. And head in the sand politics has a way of inducing head in the sand "science", which is what I fear will come out of this monitoring project. This guy Buessler has already telegraphed his bias on this topic, he clearly has the orientation of one who swallows the "safe level" of radiation theory favored by the nuke industry and their captive government mouthpieces. Unfortunately, much of academia has also been effectively captured by corporate interests as well, and I can't say I feel at all assured that we will be able to trust the data this project produces.
There is a huge volume of evidence which clearly demonstrates the complicity of ostensibly independent researchers, world wide, in covering up various aspects of the truth relating to nuclear energy, weapons, and radiation health effects. I know a German biologist (now living in New Zealand) who worked for a German agency charged with monitoring the fallout from Chernobyl in Germany - she said they were instructed to simply throw out the high radiation reading and only report low to moderate numbers, and they did.
This is from a government that was FAR more honest with their citizens about the dangers posed by Chernobyl than the US or Japan is being with their citizens about the dangers of radiation from Fukushima. (The German government actually advised the public to stay indoors during a protracted period, especially when it was raining), and still have restrictions or warnings about the consumption of certain food sources due to the ongoing contamination. So, if even they lied about the true danger and coordinated a coverup among academics and professionals, given OUR history should we expect anything less in the US?>>

EXACTLY!!!

ANOTHER READER COMMENTED:
<<It is obvious that the radiation is too high or the Overlords would measure it and tell us not to worry. The Overlords do not measure the radiation, so they can not back up their remarks with live data that the radiation levels are fine and it is not man made radiation that is causing all the problems. Look at man made climate change, the Overlords are quick to measure things there, but apparently the results would truly be too shocking if the radiation from the Japanese nuclear power plant disaster was measured. "Duck and cover.">>

COULDN'T HAVE PUT IT PLAINER MYSELF.

WANT PEER-REVIEWED PROOF THAT "LOW-LEVEL" RADIATION IS NOWHERE NEAR "HARMLESS"?
HOW MUCH PROOF?
46 STUDIES, 5000 PAPERS?
OK...

A major 2012 scientific study proves that low-level radiation can cause huge health problems. Science Daily reports:
Even the very lowest levels of radiation are harmful to life, scientists have concluded in the Cambridge Philosophical Society’s journal Biological Reviews. Reporting the results of a wide-ranging analysis of 46 peer-reviewed studies published over the past 40 years, researchers from the University of South Carolina and the University of Paris-Sud found that variation in low-level, natural background radiation was found to have small, but highly statistically significant, negative effects on DNA as well as several measures of health.
The review is a meta-analysis of studies of locations around the globe …. “Pooling across multiple studies, in multiple areas, and in a rigorous statistical manner provides a tool to really get at these questions about low-level radiation.”
Mousseau and co-author Anders Møller of the University of Paris-Sud combed the scientific literature, examining more than 5,000 papers involving natural background radiation that were narrowed to 46 for quantitative comparison. The selected studies all examined both a control group and a more highly irradiated population and quantified the size of the radiation levels for each. Each paper also reported test statistics that allowed direct comparison between the studies.
The organisms studied included plants and animals, but had a large preponderance of human subjects. Each study examined one or more possible effects of radiation, such as DNA damage measured in the lab, prevalence of a disease such as Down’s Syndrome, or the sex ratio produced in offspring. For each effect, a statistical algorithm was used to generate a single value, the effect size, which could be compared across all the studies.
The scientists reported significant negative effects in a range of categories, including immunology, physiology, mutation and disease occurrence. The frequency of negative effects was beyond that of random chance.

WANT FEDERAL REPORTS, MILITARY?
THERE ARE PLENTY OF THOSE THAT PLAINLY STATE LOW-LEVEL RADIATION IS DANGEROUS TO HUMAN LIFE...TO LIFE!

The top U.S. government radiation experts – like Karl Morgan, John Goffman and Arthur Tamplin – and scientific luminaries such as Ernest Sternglass and Alice Stewart, concluded that low level radiation can cause serious health effects.
A military briefing written by the U.S. Army for commanders in Iraq states:
Hazards from low level radiation are long-term, not acute effects… Every exposure increases risk of cancer.
(Military briefings for commanders often contain less propaganda than literature aimed at civilians, as the commanders have to know the basic facts to be able to assess risk to their soldiers.)
The briefing states that doses are cumulative, citing the following military studies and reports:
  • ACE Directive 80-63, ACE Policy for Defensive Measures against Low Level Radiological Hazards during Military Operations, 2 AUG 96
  • AR 11-9, The Army Radiation Program, 28 MAY 99
  • FM 4-02.283, Treatment of Nuclear and Radiological Casualties, 20 DEC 01
  • JP 3-11, Joint Doctrine for Operations in NBC Environments, 11 JUL 00
  • NATO STANAG 2473, Command Guidance on Low Level Radiation Exposure in Military Operations, 3 MAY 00
  • USACHPPM TG 244, The NBC Battle Book, AUG 02
Many studies have shown that repeated exposures to low levels of ionizing radiation from CT scans and x-rays can cause cancer. See this, this, this. this, this, this, this, this, this and this.

Research from the University of Iowa concluded:
Cumulative radon exposure is a significant risk factor for lung cancer in women.
And see these studies on the health effects cumulative doses of radioactive cesium.
As the European Committee on Radiation Risk notes:
Cumulative impacts of chronic irradiation in low doses are … important for the comprehension, assessment and prognosis of the late effects of irradiation on human beings …. 

Here (Krestinina et al., 2007) was a study of citizens exposed to radiation much like that which would be experienced following a reactor accident. About 17,000 members of the cohort have been studied in an international effort, largely funded by the US Energy Department; and to many in the department, this study was meant to definitively prove that protracted exposures were low in risk. The results were unexpected. The slope of the LNT fit turned out to be higher than predicted by the atomic-bomb data, providing additional evidence that protracted exposure does not reduce risk.

In a 2012 study on atomic-bomb survivor mortality data (Ozasa et al., 2012), low-dose analysis revealed unexpectedly strong evidence for the applicability of the supralinear theory. From 1950 to 2003, more than 80,000 people studied revealed high risks per unit dose in the low-dose range, from 0.01 to 0.1 Sv.
A major 2012 study of atomic bomb data by the official joint U.S.-Japanese government study of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors found that low dose radiation causes cancer and genetic damage:

YOU'VE BEEN DUPED, ALL WHO FELL FOR THAT "NO HARM FROM LOW LEVELS" BULL!
 <<When you do the meta-analysis, you do see significant negative effects.”>>

“It also provides evidence that there is no threshold below which there are no effects of radiation,” he added. “A theory that has been batted around a lot over the last couple of decades is the idea that is there a threshold of exposure below which there are no negative consequences. These data provide fairly strong evidence that there is no threshold — radiation effects are measurable as far down as you can go, given the statistical power you have at hand.”
Mousseau hopes their results, which are consistent with the “linear-no-threshold” model for radiation effects, will better inform the debate about exposure risks.
With the levels of contamination that we have seen as a result of nuclear power plants, especially in the past, and even as a result of Chernobyl and Fukushima and related accidents, there’s an attempt in the industry to downplay the doses that the populations are getting, because maybe it’s only one or two times beyond what is thought to be the natural background level,” he said. “But they’re assuming the natural background levels are fine.”

“And the truth is, if we see effects at these low levels, then we have to be thinking differently about how we develop regulations for exposures, and especially intentional exposures to populations, like the emissions from nuclear power plants, medical procedures, and even some x-ray machines at airports.”
Physicians for Social Responsibility notes:
According to the National Academy of Sciences, there are no safe doses of radiation. Decades of research show clearly that any dose of radiation increases an individual’s risk for the development of cancer. 

Radiation from CT coronary scans is considered low, but, statistically, it causes cancer in one of every 270 40-year-old women who receive the scan. Twenty year olds will have double that rate. Annually, 29,000 cancers are caused by the 70 million CT scans done in the US. Common, low-dose dental x-rays more than double the rate of thyroid cancer. Those exposed to repeated dental x-rays have an even higher risk of thyroid cancer.

“There is no safe level of radionuclide exposure, whether from food, water or other sources. Period,” said Jeff Patterson, DO, immediate past president of Physicians for Social Responsibility. “Exposure to radionuclides, such as iodine-131 and cesium-137, increases the incidence of cancer. For this reason, every effort must be taken to minimize the radionuclide content in food and water.” 
EVEN THE BLOODY EPA notes:

Cesium-133 is the only naturally occurring isotope and is non-radioactive; all other isotopes, including cesium-137, are produced by human activity.
Similarly, iodine-131 is not a naturally occurring isotope. As the Encyclopedia Britannica notes:
The only naturally occurring isotope of iodine is stable iodine-127. An exceptionally useful radioactive isotope is iodine-131…
(Fukushima has spewed much more radioactive cesium and iodine than Chernobyl. The amount of radioactive cesium released by Fukushima was some 20-30 times higher than initially admitted. Japanese experts say that Fukushima is currently releasing up to 93 billion becquerels of radioactive cesium into the ocean each day. And – as we will see below- the cesium levels hitting the west coast of North America will keep increasing for several years. Fukushima is spewing more and more radiation into the environment, and the amount of radioactive fuel at Fukushima dwarfs Chernobyl.)


PLEASE REMEMBER THE WARNING, AND DON'T NEGLECT TO THINK ABOUT THIS FOR THE SAKE OF ALL WHOM YOU LOVE....
“Consuming food containing radionuclides is particularly dangerous. If an individual ingests or inhales a radioactive particle, it continues to irradiate the body as long as it remains radioactive and stays in the body,”said Alan H. Lockwood, MD, a member of the Board of Physicians for Social Responsibility. 

PLEASE ALSO CONTACT YOUR ELECTED OFFICIALS IN WASHINGTON.
IT DOESN'T TAKE EVEN 10 MINUTES TO DO SO.
IS LIFE WORTH 10 MINUTES TO YOU?

SOME SOURCES:
~http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/12/fukushima-radiation-hits-west-coast.html

~http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/society-and-culture/dont-be-fooled-by-the-spin-radiation-is-bad-20110407-1d63z.html

~http://www.epa.gov/rpdweb00/docs/source-management/csfinallongtakeshi.pdf



~ http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/01/leading-scientist-fukushima-radiation-hitting-west-coast-north-america-one-measuring-therefore-alarmed.html

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