July 17, 2012

expert reaction to health effects of Fukushima

A study in the journal Energy & Environmental Science suggested thousands of people could potentially still die as a result of the Fukushima nuclear accident.

Prof Richard Wakeford, Visiting Professor in Epidemiology, Dalton Nuclear Institute, The University of Manchester, said:

“This study is an interesting contribution to understanding the overall impact on health of the Fukushima accident, although the calculations are complex and need to be worked through in detail to be checked properly. However, I agree with Burton Richter in his commentary accompanying the paper that the numbers of cancers that may be caused by this major accident are very small compared with the numbers of cancers that will occur for other reasons (and around 40% of people in developed countries are diagnosed with cancer at sometime in their lives). It is unlikely that these relatively small numbers of extra cancers will be detected against the usual variations in the background rates of cancer – in fact any differences will be so hard to detect that we will probably never know whether the numbers produced by the authors are correct.”

‘Worldwide health effects of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident’ by Ten Hoeve et al., published in Energy & Environmental Science on Tuesday 17th July.