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But it's not at all proven that "Fukushima caused a 35% spike in infant mortality in the US", is it? It seems sort of unlikely that no one would have noticed a

But it's not at all proven that "Fukushima caused a 35% spike in infant mortality in the US", is it? It seems sort of unlikely that no one would have noticed a tremendous spike in the amount of environmental radiation (such as would presumably be necessary to cause such an increase in infant mortality) in these northwestern US cities. Either way, though, that seems surprising to me that there'd be a 35% increase in infant mortality.

nandemo 15y ago
> But it's not at all proven that "Fukushima caused a 35% spike in infant mortality in the US", is it? I'm sorry if I didn't make it clear, but that's my point, it's so implausible. US is very far from Japan, so if there was a 35% spike there then the researchers' first reaction should have been to check the corresponding stats for Japan. If they didn't it smacks of intellectual dishonesty.
- dugorama 15y ago
  by the way, it's not a 35% spike in infant mortality, which would be immediately noticed by every pediatrician in the world. it is reportedly a 35% spike in still births - defined as a non-live birth (not even a single breath taken) after gestational age of 20 weeks. Since these only occur 3 in 1,000 birth events in the US to begin with, an individual OB/GYN would never notice a 35% spike (which would increase the rate to 4/1000). This is the kind of thing only dedicated epidemiologist who are studying it intensely could ever notice in real time. The CDC won't even catch up with such a hard-to-measure spike until their next reporting cycle - several years from now.