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UN experts find 'no harmful effects' from Fukushima (2021)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- pfdietz 3y agoThe expected increase in cancer would be statistically undetectable. That doesn't mean regulators should assume there is no increase.
- u320 3y agoIt's rather that just because it would be statistically undetectable, we don't really know what the expected increase is. We really don't have good empirical data on the harmful effects of low amounts of radiation. Especially when the best data we could have had, happened to coincide with an empire collapse with major health impacts on the population.
- nfca 3y agoWhy should they make any assumptions? If no 'statistical' increment can be detected, and "statistics" is still science, then doesn't this resolve the matter?
- w4rh4wk5 3y agoThe most important aspect of science is to account for the possibility of being wrong. Why should they? Because better safe, than sorry.
- u320 3y agoBecause society does not accept the answer "we really don't know" in cases of public health.
- TheRealPomax 3y agoExcept it's not "we really don't know", it's "after looking at thousands upon thousands of cases over many decades, there do not appear to be any statistically relevant effects".
- pfdietz 3y agoFrom this specific accident. However, the evidence from radiation biology in general is that there should be a certain number of cancers (and no, don't feed me anti-LNT BS.)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- NovemberWhiskey 3y agoBut, you know, probably fewer than accounted for natural variations in the background level caused by different rock types in the area or exposure to residual fly ash from thermal power plants, right?
- pfdietz 3y agoWhy do you imagine that point has any relevance?
- NovemberWhiskey 3y agoIt seems fairly obvious that if the influence of a nuclear accident on cancer rates is dominated by other factors, one should look to mitigate those other factors before worrying about the nuclear accident as a contributor.
- pfdietz 3y agoThat's not how regulation works. One does not get a free pass to cause harm just because something else is causing more harm.
- pfdietz 3y agoNo, it doesn't resolve the matter, since the lower bound on detectability is still a very large number of cancers (most of which will not have occurred yet). Understand that regulation is not like criminal law. Radiation does not have to be presumed innocent until proven guilty.
- NovemberWhiskey 3y agoThat's such a strange thing to say; no-one is suggesting that radiation gets a presumption of innocence. As far as I understand it, there's no generally agreed viewpoint on the expected effect size for exposure to low levels of radiation. In this case, there was discovered to be no statistically meaningful effect. This is now something that new that we know.
- pfdietz 3y agoThe question becomes: how should low doses of radiation be regulated? One approach would be unless you can prove the radiation is having an effect, it gets a free pass. This would likely result in substantially larger population exposures. If enough individual sources are given free passes, eventually the dose accumulates to something that would have an obviously visible effect. Another approach would be precautionary: assume radiation has the maximum effect not ruled out by evidence. This would result in much stricter control than current regulation, which assumes the effect is linear down to zero dose. Some anti-nuclear activists have objected to LNT because they think it's underestimating the effect of radiation (not that they have good evidence for that.) Current regulation is between these, assuming linear effect. This is a biologically reasonable assumption, since at low doses the number of affected cells is proportional to dose, and it's unlikely any single cell is directly affected more than once. It also takes into account the cumulative, additive effect of radiation exposures from multiple sources.
- gweinberg 3y agoThat's not the way statistics work. You won't be able to definitively state there was an increase in the number of cancers based on statistics if the actual increase was smaller than the uncertainty in the number of cancers you would expect. That doesn't mean the increase was zero.
- NovemberWhiskey 3y ago>That's not the way statistics work. Testing the null hypothesis is exactly the way that statistics works.
- jenadine 3y agoRegulator can add a sign at the entrance of affected area that reads something like > WARNING: This area contains chemicals known to the State of California to possibly cause cancer
- Manuel_D 3y agoIf it was statistically undetectable, then whatever increase may have happened would be very small. Otherwise it would be statistically detectable.
- pfdietz 3y agoThere are so many natural cancers that the noise floor is still very large. Also, not all the cancers will have occurred yet.
- parineum 3y agoSince you can't prove a negative, we shouldn't assume that the disaster wasn't caused by an angry unicorn.
- a_gnostic 3y ago[flagged]
- GNOMES 3y agoThis video shows lots of hand waving by the government/businesses involved. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwFoOVyB40s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwFoOVyB40s
- TMWNN 3y agoRelevant: TIL that after the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident, an estimated 150,000 unnecessary abortions occurred worldwide from women afraid of radiation mutations. There is no evidence whatsoever of any increase in birth defects; not even in Belarus and Ukraine, the closest to Chernobyl. <https://np.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/6q3b2c/til_that_after_the_1986_chernobyl_nuclear/ https://np.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/6q3b2c/til_th...> I've read of similar (non-)findings after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Basically, there is no evidence of any long-term cancer or birth defect increase among survivors. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki#Post-attack_casualties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_a...>
- red_trumpet 3y agoWhat? The section "Cancer increases" from your Wikipedia link is pretty clear: > Almost all cases of leukemia over the following 50 years were in people exposed to more than 1Gy. > the RERF estimates that, from 1950 to 2000, 46 percent of leukemia deaths [...] were likely due to radiation from the bombs or some other post-attack city effects
- NegativeLatency 3y agoI'd still prefer not to get nuked
- LargoLasskhyfv 3y agoThere are other relevant findings Significant increase in trisomy 21 in Berlin nine months after the Chernobyl reactor accident: temporal correlation or causal relation? https://www.bmj.com/content/309/6948/158 https://www.bmj.com/content/309/6948/158 That's for West-Berlin, at that time the GDR(East-Germany) also accounted for that, and found similarly elevated case numbers in that time-frame. But I can't find those, anymore. (Or don't want to, too much hassle, just a piece of personal memory, probably lost in the bitrot of the web) Hassle: Evidence for an increase in trisomy 21 (Down syndrome) in Europe after the Chernobyl reactor accident https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/gepi.20662 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/gepi.20662 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22162022/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22162022/ edit: maybe /r isn't such a good place to learn? The Chernobyl accident, congenital anomalies and other reproductive outcomes https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8516187/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8516187/
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- DueDilligence 3y ago[dead]
- ortusdux 3y agoBy September 2020, 2313 disaster-related deaths among evacuees from Fukushima prefecture, that were not due to radiation-induced damage or to the earthquake or to the tsunami, had been identified by the Japanese authorities. About 90% of deaths were for persons above 66 years of age. Of these, about 30% occurred within the first three months of the evacuations, and about 80% within two years. The premature disaster-related deaths were mainly related to (i) physical and mental illness brought about by having to reside in shelters and the trauma of being forced to move from care settings and homes; and (ii) delays in obtaining needed medical support because of the enormous destruction caused by the earthquake and tsunami. However, the radiation levels in most of the evacuated areas were not greater than the natural radiation levels in high background areas elsewhere in the world where no adverse health effect is evident. https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-security/safety-of-plants/fukushima-daiichi-accident.aspx https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-sec...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- hinkley 3y agoAre they ignoring the cleanup crews in this number? The story I heard is that old people volunteered because they wouldn’t live long enough to get cancer. Assuming they didn’t get radiation poisoning doing the work in the first place. If you don’t account for those sorts of sacrifices then I don’t know that you can count on them repeating in the future.
- yellow_lead 3y agoNot sure why you were down voted. From 2018: > TOKYO — More than seven years after a devastating earthquake and tsunami caused meltdowns at a nuclear power plant in Fukushima, Japan acknowledged for the first time this week that a worker died from cancer after being exposed to radiation. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/05/world/asia/japan-fukushima-radiation-cancer-death.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/05/world/asia/japan-fukushim... Edit- I don't think this is cleanup specifically but there've been many attributions of cancer to Fukushima, even one by the UN attributing the events to thyroid cancer in children. I guess they changed their mind?
- arp242 3y ago> Not sure why you were down voted Because the article already addresses this.
- hinkley 3y agoSo it’s the “all articles have shitty titles” argument again? No, I call bullshit. The conclusion is that there were “no effects” not minimal effects. Dead people are > 0. An unsupported conclusion would cost you a letter grade on a college paper. This isn’t college. It’s a study that will affect public policy for many decades.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- yellow_lead 3y ago
- yellow_lead 3y ago(2021)
- resource_waste 3y agoI find it frustrating how the UN uses 'experts' in their various organizations to come up with recommendations rather than scientific conclusions. Clearly this is anti-science and pro-authority, and maybe the UN doesn't claim that their organizations like the World Health Organization are science based. However when a common person hears the World Health Organization gives a recommendation, they likely have no idea that a panel of experts gave an opinion with potentially no scientific backing. (Citation for this particular incident was the WHO recommendation on number of hours a <1 year old can watch tv, 0 hours before age 1, no scientific basis.)
- itishappy 3y agoYou nailed the cause. It's the United Nations, not the United Scientists. It's primary goal is maintaining peace and facilitating international cooperation. Scientists share findings and recommendations, but states build the reports.
- Log_out_ 3y agoIt's main purpose is to lend democratic deco to whatever authoritarian colonial system has a solid majority ownership of its members.
- orwin 3y agoOk, this is interesting for two reasons: First, once again, it was said in a sister thread, no mention of the workers. Especially the 13 who were exposed to up to 32 gray. Those were "heroes" at the time, they volonteered, and like all "heroes", were quickly forgotten. I imagine getting those doses prevents you from being near a reactor, at a hospital or flying a plane, so they likely had to loose their jobs, but also be harder to treat at hospitals and endanger themselves when taking the plane for vacations. The fact that "only" one died and that none of the other yet suffer from anything is good (the report indicated cataracts and blindness are more probably than hyperthyroid, so that's great for them). I would like to know if they receive a pension and are now retired, or if they still work. (also i think its evidence that privatization and subcontracting in the nuclear industry is the dumbest thing you can do. I can imagine doing that at 50yo for the country i live in. For a subcontracting company? please, let the administrators and the execs do that) -------------- Second, sorry it's my left brain who does that: What are the plan in case another fukushima hit then? 2k people (between 1600 and 1900) died during fukushima evacuation. Mostly displaced ederly, but the panic killed small children. Displacement stress could have added up too, being on the ground could be view as a stigma (i've hear its less true than for the two atomic bombs and Chernobyl - where sightly irradiated people were pariahs - but still), and suicide are not counted on this stat, but the death count could be higher. This is evidence than even without a core catcher and an old, pretty poor design, we have time to think and slow down the evacuation, take our time to do it correctly, and maybe redraw the exclusion zone once the reactor is stopped and data come in. In both direction: i wouldn't have minded at all making the exclusion zone on the shore and in the sea bigger, and the one inland smaller, as soon as 2013.