CTVNews.ca Staff
Published Monday, October 7, 2013 8:38AM EDT
Two and a half years after the Fukushima nuclear plant
disaster in Japan, concerns are again being raised about radiation levels in
fish caught in the Pacific Ocean.
A report by the Vancouver weekly newspaper, The Georgia
Straight, suggests at least 800 people worldwide could develop cancer from
eating fish caught in Japan's waters – and about half of those cases will be
fatal.
About 500 of the cancers will occur in Japan, while 75 will
be due to Japanese fish exports to other countries, including Canada, the
newspaper estimates. It also quotes several nuclear experts who say that
estimate is likely conservative and the real toll could be closer to 80,000
cancers.
Gordon Edwards, president of the Canadian Coalition for
Nuclear Responsibility, notes that the estimate is based only on the fish that
has been eaten up to now.
"People are going to continue to consume these fish and
the toll could rise higher," he told CTV's Canada AM Monday from Montreal.
Radiation in fish in the waters off Japan has been a major
issue of concern for many since March 2011, when an earthquake destroyed the
Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, sending tons of highly radioactive water into
the ocean. The radioactive elements in the water could take decades to degrade,
affecting several generations of fish.
The Japanese Fisheries Agency has been testing the radiation
in fish caught in its waters since March 2011. On average, fish in the 33,000
tests had 18 becquerels per kilo of radioactive cesium – well below Health
Canada’s ceiling of 1,000 becquerels per kilo for cesium and even Japan's
ceiling of 100 becquerels.
But even those radiation levels can still cause cancer,
according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s cancer-risk formula.
And Edwards says Health Canada's own cesium limits are more
of a guideline than a clear safety limit.
"It has to be recognized that even Health Canada
acknowledges that even those levels correspond to an increased cancer risk of
eight cancers per 1,000 people exposed over a 70-year period. So these are not
safe levels, even by Health Canada's own standards," he said.
Some fish samples tested to date have had very high levels
of radiation: one sea bass sample collected in July, for example, had 1,000
becquerels per kilogram of cesium.
While Canadians are exposed to radiation every day from the
sun and the environment, Edwards notes that radioactive cesium doesn't exist in
nature at all and it's not known if there is any safe level.
"The background level is zero. So this is all comes
from the Fukushima disaster," he said of the fish.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency tested fish exports from
Japan for several months, but dropped the testing in June 2011, just three
months after the disaster.
Edwards says he does not understand why the CFIA is not
taking the issue more seriously.
"Canadian authorities are really doing us all a
disservice by not following and monitoring this much more closely. They're
treating it as though it's a kind of ho-hum situation, but in fact, it was a
major event worldwide," he said.
"And it should be studied very more carefully because
that's the only way we're going to learn what the effects of this may be for
the future."
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