[ RadSafe ] KABC TV Los Angeles and KGO TV San Francisco Report on Fukushima

Thu Nov 14 20:00:15 CST 2013

KABC-TV Los Angeles has the original report and shows the degree that the
anti-nuclear community has been led to become scientifically illiterate and
then bullies people who know much more than they do.

http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=news/world_news&id=9317789

On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 5:26 PM, Roger Helbig <rwhelbig at gmail.com> wrote:

> Sorry about that - apparently the page has changed.  While looking for
> this, I found another story that I did not notice last year - the claim of
> potentially 30 deaths from Fukushima in US seems pretty far fetched despite
> the Stanford connection to the "research".  I will find the new link
> probably from KABC-TV in LA.  I have had fairly positive replies from Dan
> Ashley at KGO so maybe they removed the story from their website, but I
> doubt that happened.
>
> Roger Helbig
>
> http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/state&id=8742223
>
> California News
> Researchers estimate more deaths from Fukushima fallout
> Thursday, July 19, 2012
>  by Susanne Rust for California Watch
>
> New research suggests that the cancer and death toll from Fukushima may be
> higher than previously claimed.
>
> According to a team of Stanford University researchers, most of these
> deaths will likely occur in Japan, but there could be as many as 30
> casualties from radiation exposure in North America.
>
> These numbers are in addition to the roughly 600 people who died as result
> of the evacuation near Fukushima after the plant's meltdown in March 2011.
>
> Related Content
> link: More stories from California Watch <http://californiawatch.org/>
>  The new estimates stand in stark contrast to others, including the United
> Nations Science Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, which
> suggested there would be no deaths as a result of the radioactive release.
>
>  Mark Jacobson <http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/>, co-author
> of the study and an environmental and civil engineer at Stanford
> University, said he didn't have any expectations when he started looking
> into the issue but wasn't surprised that the claim of "zero health impacts"
> was not correct.
>
> "I am very familiar with the health impacts of air pollutants and
> particulate matter," Jacobson said. "If you reduce the concentration you'll
> have fewer health impacts. Why should this be any different?"
>
> To get a handle on how the radiation was distributed, Jacobson and Ten
> Hoeve, another Stanford researcher, used a 3-D global atmospheric model
> they actively use to track and trace pollutants across the globe. The model
> is based on more than 20 years of research collected by Jacobson, who is
> particularly interested in the migration of pollutants from mainland Asia
> to California.
>
> So, when the Fukushima disaster happened, he figured he'd throw radiation
> into the analysis and build a model that could track the released iodine
> and cesium.
>
> Not surprisingly, it moved around in similar fashion to other pollutants,
> with iodine behaving like a gas and cesium like a particulate. With
> prevailing westerly winds, only about 19 percent of the fallout made it to
> land, and the rest drifted out to sea.
>
> The researchers then combined that information with a standard
> health-effects model, which is used by public health researchers to
> estimate exposure to radioactivity.
>
> They found that the number of deaths would likely range between 15 and
> 1,300, with a best estimate of 130, while the number of people acquiring
> cancer as a result would range between 24 and 2,500, with a best estimate
> of 180.
>
> Most deaths and cancer cases are likely to occur in Japan, but there may
> be a few in mainland Asia and as far away as North America.
>
> "These worldwide levels are relatively low," Hoeve said in a press
> statement. He said these numbers should "serve to manage the fear in other
> countries that the disaster had an extensive global reach."
>
> The research appears in Tuesday's journal Energy and Environmental Science<http://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2012/ee/c2ee22019a>
> .
>
> Paul Carroll, program director of the Ploughshares Fund, an antinuclear
> organization, said he thought the casualties seemed a little low and
> stressed that this kind of epidemiological data is highly uncertain.
>
> "It is extremely difficult to predict the long-term effects of radiation,
> especially when you start factoring in things like different types of
> radiation, at different levels, at constant low levels, on different
> people," he said.
>
> "It's the difference between death by a thousand cuts or death by a
> guillotine," he explained. "So much of our data is based on large doses of
> exposure to radiation, not the constant, low levels. Which cut eventually
> killed the person? The 999th or the 1,000th?"
>
> Jacobson agreed that the epidemiological data is the most uncertain, which
> is why their projected ranges were so wide.
>
> But he said one of the reasons the deaths may seem so low is that only
> about 19 percent of the fallout found its way to land; the rest went out to
> sea.
>
> If the same accident had happened at Diablo Canyon, Jacobson said, 45
> percent of the radiation would find its way to land. Therefore, despite the
> fact that the population density around Diablo Canyon is a fourth of that
> around the Japanese power plant, the death rate would be 25 percent higher.
>
> Jacobson said one of the most important factors, however, in keeping
> deaths from climbing in a disaster like this is a swift government
> response. And it is likely, in large part, the Japanese government's
> response that prevented Fukushima from becoming Chernobyl, where nothing
> was done to remove people from the surrounding area.
>
> *Story courtesy of our media partners at California Watch
> <http://californiawatch.org/> (A Project of the Center for Investigative
> Reporting)*
>
>
>
> On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 11:41 AM, Brent Rogers <
> brent.rogers at optusnet.com.au> wrote:
>
>> Tried link.  URL NOt Found
>>
>> Brent
>>
>> Brevity alert: Sent from my iPad
>>
>> > On 13 Nov 2013, at 19:09, Roger Helbig <rwhelbig at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> > KGO Anchor Dan Ashley is very receptive to comments on this very badly
>> done
>> > report by a reporter who was in Japan after the tsunami.   I wrote to
>> him
>> > after seeing the teaser during Jeopardy this evening and he wrote back.
>>  I
>> > watched the 11PM news and it was worse than I had imagined.
>> >
>> > http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/state&id=9323780
>> >
>> > Roger Helbig
>> > _______________________________________________
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>
>