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

Fri Nov 15 12:54:14 CST 2013

Roger,

      You really ought to subscribe to Mother  Jones Magazine/Newspaper (a 
NORML kind of publication), so you won't have to  search so far and wide for 
Anti-Nuclear publications/articles.  Keep up the  good work.

      Joe Preisig

In a message dated 11/14/2013 9:01:13 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,  
rwhelbig at gmail.com writes:

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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