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Radioactive cesium-137 was found in urine samples from 141 infants and young children in Fukushima Prefecture, home to the wrecked Fukushima-Daiichi reactor complex.
 
The Yokohama-based Isotope Research Institute reported July 1 that the cesium was found in urine from infants and kids surveyed between November 2011 and January 2012.
 
The grim finding is ominous in view of the extreme radioactivity and environmental persistence of cesium-137, which has a 30 year half-life. This means it stays in the ecosphere for roughly 300 years before decaying to barium. For three centuries, cesium-137 remains a strong emitter of gamma radiation.
 
The European Committee on Radiation Risk says that the risk from internal radiation exposure “is between 200 and 600 times greater than the risk from external exposure,” according to Dr. Junro Fuse, head of Kosugi Medical Clinic near Tokyo, Japan.
 
Last February, scientists said that a staggering 40,000 trillion becquerels of radioactive cesium, twice the amount previously estimated, may have been catapulted by Fukushima’s three explosions and three meltdowns that began March 11, 2011. The new guess is about 20 percent of the estimated discharge from the 1986 Chernobyl radiation disaster in Ukraine.
 
Cesium is especially dangerous because of its chemical similarity to potassium, which means it concentrates in muscle, causing radioactive exposure to surrounding tissues. During the time that the gamma ray-emitting cesium is inside our bodies, smashing cell walls and cracking apart DNA, each and every bit of damage has the potential to result in a cancer, an immune disorder, or some other disease.
 
The EPA says cesium poisoning happens when we eat contaminated food, drink poisoned water, or inhale contaminated dust. People all across Japan have been doing just these things for 17 months, since the start of the radioactive disaster in March 2011. With the unavoidable consumption of contaminated foods and water by the Japanese people, young and old alike, the long-term consequences of the Fukushima catastrophe will be overwhelming.

Last year, seafood, beef, rice, tea, seaweed, vegetables, and soils across 9,200 square miles were reported to be contaminated with cesium-137. Beef exports were banned for a time. Fish like the Sand Lance and others have been forbidden. Rice farmers and fishers have been thrown out of work indefinitely, even as tens of thousands are still living “evacuation lives,” never to go home again.

Cells can sometimes repair themselves after being hit with ionizing radiation. But with chronic internal contamination, cells can be hit a second time during the crucial repair period, and this “second event” sometimes makes recovery impossible. With state-issued “allowances” for cesium contamination in rice, fish, veggies, etc., the Japanese are being poisoned. Their internal body burden of cesium grows every day, although the government knows that internal radioactivity is cumulative, the damage irreversible.
In towns near the reactors’ wreckage, hundreds of school yards have had topsoil removed and stashed away in boxes. But beyond the school grounds, at least 30,000 children in Fukushima Prefecture are being exposed to levels of radiation exposure that will cause serious health consequences later in life.
Five months after Fukushima went out of control, Prof. Toshiso Kosako resigned in protest. A radiation safety expert appointed to oversee Fukushima cleanup work, minister Kosako went before the parliament in Tokyo and accused the prime minister of violating the law on radiation hazards. He said that for children to be exposed to radiation above threshold levels is unconscionable, and he wept openly while testifying.
 With 300-year cesium being found in infants down the road from Fukushima, and in Bluefin Tuna thousands of miles from the dead zone, the world has barely begun to see the effects of this worst of all industrial catastrophes.  
—John LaForge is on the staff of Nukewatch and edits is Quarterly.