US first nation to block Japan food produce
TOKYO—Radiation danger from Japan’s tsunami-smashed nuclear plant heightened on Wednesday, with authorities advising against allowing infants to drink tap water in the capital due to contamination and the United States becoming the first nation to block certain food imports from Japan.
The crisis at the crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Station, 250 kilometers north of the Japanese capital, deepened after emergency workers were ordered to leave the site as black smoke began rising from one of six reactors.
The Dai-ichi plant was severely damaged by a 9.0-magnitude earthquake and 10-meter-high tsunami on March 11, leaving as many as 23,000 people officially listed as dead or missing.
Tokyo authorities said water at a purification plant for the capital’s 13 million people had 210 becquerels of radioactive iodine—more than twice the safety level for infants.
“This is without doubt, an effect of the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant,” Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara said.
Shintaro, however, said the radiation level posed no immediate health risk and water could still be used. “But for infants under age 1, I would like them to refrain from using tap water to dilute baby formula,” he said.
International concerns about the safety of Japanese food are growing, with the United States becoming the latest nation to impose restrictions.
The US Food and Drug Administration said it was stopping imports of milk, vegetable and fruit from the Fukushima, Ibaraki, Tochigi and Gunma prefectures in the vicinity of the stricken nuclear plant.
The US agency was responding to mounting fears that contaminated food from Japan could make it to American stores. Food from Japan makes up less than 4 percent of all foods imported into the United States.
South Korea may be next to ban Japanese food in the wake of the world’s worst nuclear accident since the Chernobyl catastrophe in 1986.
France this week asked the European Commission to look into harmonizing controls on radioactivity in imports from Japan. Food made up less than 1 percent of Japan’s total exports last year.
Above safe levels
Japanese authorities said above-safety radiation levels had been discovered in milk, water and at least 11 types of vegetables from the contaminated area.
Officials, however, insisted there was no major danger to humans and urged the world not to overreact.
“We will explain to countries the facts and we hope they will take logical measures based on them,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano, who has been the government’s public face during the disaster, told a news conference.
Japan has already halted shipment of some food from the Fukushima area and told people there to stop eating leafy vegetables.
Anxiety in Asia
Asian countries are inspecting imports for contamination, and Taiwan advised boats to stop fishing in Japanese waters.
No Asian government has yet imposed a ban on Japanese food imports, but supermarkets and restaurants across the continent are selling fewer Japanese products. With radiation continuing to leak at the Dai-ichi nuclear plant, Asians are growing increasingly anxious.
“Over the past two weeks, we’ve had the lowest number of customers since I opened three years ago,” said Japanese restaurateur Shigeyoshi Yasumoto, who runs the Saika eatery in Metro Manila.
Across the Saika eatery, a speciality Japanese store was almost empty of customers this week. The Filipino manager said business had almost dried up.
“I can’t blame the customers. I wouldn’t buy Japanese products myself nowadays, although we assure the public our stocks were pre-March 11,” the manager said.
Two of the biggest South Korean supermarket chains, Lotte Mart and Homeplus, suspended sales of some Japanese fish this week.
Tensions were similarly rising in Hong Kong, where thousands of people work in about 600 Japanese restaurants.
Lack of information
At the Fukushima plant, engineers are battling to cool reactors to contain further contamination and avert a meltdown. But they were ordered out on Wednesday when black smoke began rising from the No. 3 reactor.
The plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., said it did not know what was causing the smoke.
Technicians working inside an evacuation zone around the Fukushima nuclear plant have successfully attached power cables to all six reactors and started a pump at one to cool overheating fuel rods.
As well as having its workers on the front line in highly dangerous circumstances, Tokyo Power is also facing accusations of a slow disaster response and questions over why it originally stored more uranium at the plant than it was designed to hold.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) expressed concern about a lack of information from Japanese authorities. The Vienna-based UN nuclear watchdog cited missing data on temperatures of spent fuel pools at the Dai-ichi facility’s Nos. 1, 3 and 4 reactors.
“We continue to see radiation coming from the site . . . and the question is where exactly is that coming from?” said James Lyons, a senior IAEA official.
Radioactive fallout
US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he was concerned about radioactive fallout affecting the 55,000 American troops in and around Japan, many involved in a massive relief operation for Washington’s close ally.
Worsened by widespread ignorance of the technicalities of radiation, public concern also is rising around the world. Radioactive particles have been found as far away as Iceland.
Experts said tiny traces of radioactive particles, measured by a network of monitoring stations as they spread eastward from Japan across the Pacific, North America, the Atlantic and to Europe, were far too low to cause any harm to humans.
Global impact
“It’s only a matter of days before it disperses in the entire northern hemisphere,” said Andreas Stohl, a senior scientist at the Norwegian Institute for Air Research
The Japan crisis has dealt a blow to the nuclear power industry around the world. Italy became the latest nation to reassess its nuclear energy program, announcing a one-year moratorium on site selection and building of plants.
The crisis in the world’s third-biggest economy—and its key position in global supply chains, especially for the auto and technology sectors—has added to global market jitters, which have been aggravated by the conflict in Libya and unrest in the Middle East.
Asian shares fell on Wednesday, with Tokyo’s Nikkei ending 1.65 percent down. Japanese stocks are about 8 percent below their close on the day the big quake struck.
The tsunami and earthquake are the world’s costliest ever natural disaster, with the government estimating damage at 15-25 trillion yen ($185 billion-$308 billion). The upper end of that range would equate to about 6 percent of Japan’s gross domestic product.
Mass graves
The official death toll has risen to 9,199, but with 13,786 people still reported missing, it is certain to rise.
There are reports that dozens of survivors, mostly elderly, have died in hospitals and evacuation centers due to improper treatment—or simply because of the cold.
Desperate municipalities are digging mass graves, unthinkable in a nation where the dead are usually cremated and their ashes placed in stone family tombs near Buddhist temples.
“This is a special measure, but there is nothing much else we can do,” said Kazuhiko Endo, an official in Kamaishi town, where a mass burial is planned on Friday for 150 unidentified people.
“More than a week has passed since we placed them in morgues and we don’t know if they can be identified,” he added. Reports from Reuters and Agence France-Presse
