Thoughts on radioactive bombardment.

While there seems to be no end in sight for Japan's nuclear crisis the EPA has released only one statement since last week's claim that "Radiation monitors confirm that no radiation levels of concern have reached the United States." The following excerpts from the EPA's website are dated March 22nd "EPA’s RadNet filter results for San Francisco, Seattle, Riverside and Anaheim, California detected minuscule quantities of iodine isotopes and other radioactive particles that pose no health concern at the detected levels." "All of the radiation levels detected during the detailed filter analysis are hundreds of thousands to millions of times below levels of concern." This is the most recent message we've gotten from the EPA which is based on readings taken on or before March 18th. The radiation that UCB has been monitoring in rain water has spiked since then, yet we have yet to receive any further information from government agencies.

While UCB Dept of Nuclear Engineering is doing a great job of evaluating rain and air samples they have been qualifying their results with assurances that the Bay Area's levels of radiation are below the exposure received during plane flights or x-rays. I would ask how we can correlate the exposure we receive from a plane flight or an x-ray with the Cesium raining down on us in the Bay Area when Cesium is a product of nuclear fission and not present in air travel or medical procedures. Medical researchers have some knowledge of how Cesium affects us in the short term (smaller amounts may cause infertility and cancer), but no studies have definitively concluded what low, prolonged doses of Cesium does in the human body, therefore we can't really say we are getting a "safe" dose of Cesium in our rain water. With Cesium’s half life of 30 years, Californians my age will be ingesting this product of the Fukushima disaster for the rest of our lives. And Cesium is not the only toxic compound being found in Bay Area air and rain water. What happens years hence when these cancer causing compounds continue to leech into our tap water and food chain? No one has addressed these questions in the media.

The EPA, CDC and the California Dept of Public Health continue to make vague assurances that the radiation reaching the West Coast poses "insignificant" health risks. The "elephant in the room" is the fact that we've been getting a huge amount of rain in Northern California in the past couple of weeks which most certainly contains elements released from the continuing Fukushima disaster.

There seems to be no end in sight of the radiation spewing from the crippled reactors. We are putting a lot of trust in our government to accept their vague assurances that our health is not at risk. The fact is we have no idea what the intake of low levels of radioactive particles will do to us and our children over time. If we could have some real data accompanied by thoughtful analysis we could at least make up our own minds how to protect ourselves and our children.

The US should be far more forceful in demanding information and action from the Japanese. While we all feel deeply for the horrific loss our neighbors have endured but we must demand far more information than we've received so far. As of today, March 26th, there's rumors Tepco plans on "salvaging" or at least keeping the reactors running for a time, but if they need to be entombed to stop the continuous plume blowing toward the West Coast then that's what we should demand. And we need to be trusted with more detailed news than we are getting. Avoiding a panic is not worth sacrificing the truth.