Fukushima
by Larry McCart
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On Monday, August 6, 1945, at 8:15 AM, the nuclear bomb "Little Boy" was dropped on Hiroshima by a US airplane, directly killing an estimated 80,000 people. By the end of the year, injury and radiation brought total casualties to over 90,000. On Friday, March 11, 2011, a nuclear bomb in Fukushima went off after being delivered by General Electric, a US war materials company, indirectly killing an estimated 800,000 people over the next 30 years. By the end of the year, estimates of injury likely will be higher when radiation casualties outside Japan are included. Radiation from the Fukushima bomb is an invisible enemy that will haunt the human race for centuries, will alter their bodies, and claim the lives of loved ones. Disaster scenes in Fukushima overlap with what happened in Hiroshima. Many citizens of Hiroshima have difficulty sleeping at night because the Fukushima scenes haunt them with memories of Hiroshima 66 years ago. A resident of Hiroshima said, "I am very scared that the people in Fukushima will have to go through the terrible ordeal that we went through". As radiation continues to seep out of the crippled nuclear plant, the situation in Fukushima becomes increasingly dire as many people wonder how many will be affected by deadly radiation. The government of Japan must provide detailed and accurate information on the situation. The Japanese military must hunt down and arrest war criminals responsible for this nuclear holocaust. Residents within 12 miles (20 kilometers) have been evacuated, while those up to 19 miles (30 kilometers) away have been urged to leave voluntarily as radiation has made its way into vegetables, raw milk , and water.Tap water as far away as Tokyo, 140 miles (220 kilometers) to the south, contained levels of cancer-causing iodine-131, considered to be unsafe for infants. A fish was caught on April 1, 2011, midway between Fukushima and Tokyo that contained dangerously high levels of radioactive iodine and high levels of cesium. On April 2, 2011, nuclear safety officials said seawater outside the plant was found to contain 7.5 million times the legal limit for radioactive iodine — the highest rate yet and a sign that more contaminated water was making its way into the ocean. This contaminated sea water will spread world-wide, and will cause an increase in low level radioactivity for Great Britain and the US. Low level radioactivity includes the on-going amount of radiation released from the everyday operation of the world's nuclear power plants, plus leaks and accidents. Low level radioactivity causes a number of problems.
(1) INFERTILITY Radiation causes infertility. The global fertility rate has dropped nearly half since 1955.
(2) WEAKENED IMMUNE SYSTEM Radiation weakens the immune system. A hundred-nation study on quality of health found the United States was number one in 1943. By 1992 the United States was number 100, according to a US Public Health Statistics Report. Globally health is deteriorating with incidence of cancer, heart, allergies, and infectious diseases increasing.
(3) MUTATED VIRUS AND BACTERIA Even at low levels radiation may increase mutations of bacteria and virus. Mutations are causing the appearance of new diseases such as Reyes Syndrome, Legionnaire's Disease and Lyme Disease.
(4) OZONE BREAKDOWN Large-scale breakdown of the protective ozone layer in the stratosphere was initiated in 1958 by high atmosphere bomb tests, and continues due to releases from nuclear power plants and nuclear reprocessing plants. Radioactive Krypton-85 goes to the stratosphere where it greatly enhances CFC ozone damage.
(5) LOSS OF OXYGEN GLOBALLY According to one report, the percentage of oxygen in the air in some areas of Planet Earth is down to about 19 percent. In 1952 the percentage of oxygen in the air of Planet Earth was about 21 percent. Trees and plankton convert carbon dioxide to oxygen. Trees are killed because of radiation pollution.
(6) SOLUTIONS Clean, renewable energy sources: Solar, thermal, photovoltaic, wind, biomass, hydro, and other renewable technologies. ______________________________
(1) INFERTILITY The global fertility rate has dropped by nearly half since 1955. The cumulative effects of radiation-caused infertility raise the possibility of gradual human extinction. We may be concerned about the Pentagon backed globalization of trade, but there are more important worries. This trade scenario to sell more goods is built on the quicksand assumption that there will continue to be consumers. Projected sales and quarterly growth are predicated on one variable that can no longer be counted on — living consumers. Escalating infertility in the United States has forced couples to turn to the fast emerging new world of assisted reproduction and pre-made embryos in ever-growing numbers. A front-page New York Times article of November 23, 1997, "Clinics Selling Embryos Made for Adoption" explains "Anguished infertile couples are more than willing to pay for whatever infertility clinics can offer". Fear of the "population bomb" of the 1960's has turned into the "birth dearth" of the 1990's. The so-called replacement rate is 2.1 children , that is needed to keep the population from falling. The current fertility rate in the developed nations is 1.6 children per woman. In the less developed countries it is now 3 and falling.United States fertility rates are below replacement rates for the last 25 years. From 1950 to 1955 the global fertility rate was 5. Today the global fertility rate is 2.8.According to a 1996 United Nations report, "World Population prospects: The 1996 Revision" , fifty one nations with 44 percent of the world's people are now at, or below the replacement requirements.Dr. John Gofman, an eminent scientist, medical doctor, and eloquent spokesman against the hazards of nuclear power, explained back in the 1970's, in his book Population Control Through Nuclear Pollution, "that the worry about over-population would become a non-worry due to radioactivity" .This is confirmed in the decline in fertility among those born at the time of atmospheric bomb testing (1955-1963). Dr. Rosalie Bertell, mathematician, epidemiologist , and president of International Institute of Concern for Public Health has been researching infertility for some years and feels it is the "cutting edge" of radiation health damage, surpassing immune damage in the extent of its implications, as it raises the possibility of human extinction.In response to questions on the status of this research, Dr. Rosalie Bertell writes in a personal correspondence (November 1997): "We found in Kerala, India, that when comparing people matched for socioeconomic status, class, religion, occupation, and life style, those living on high-radiation-background soil (300 to 3000 mrad per year) had twice the rate of couples who want children and are unable to have children than we found for those living on normal-radiation-background soil (below 300 mrad per year) ".The baby boomers are the group born in the USA after the war, 1946 through 1963, and these are the years of atmospheric bomb testing as well as the start of the nuclear power industry. They show a high rate of immune related diseases and also an increasing rate of infertility. Two surveys, in 1965 and 1976, show that the percent of infertility of the baby boomers increased, and the percent of infertility of the pre-baby boomers born before bomb testing and nuclear power decreased.
(2) WEAKENED IMMUNITY On the correlation between low dose radiation and weakened immunity, radiation physicist, Dr. Ernest Sternglass, states in a 1986 article: "It appears that perhaps the most serious unanticipated effects of fallout is long-term, persistent immune deficiency". And he clarifies, "It can weaken the immune defenses of the body at very low total doses leading to unexpectedly large increases in infectious diseases and cancers" (International Journal of Biosocial Research, July 1986, page 18)Initially zealous misrepresentation of the facts led the public to understand that small amounts of radiation were of no special concern. Yet these low levels are exactly what causes weak immunity and resulting diseases.Authorities could not ignore emerging data . In December 1989 the National Academy of Sciences stated in a report titled Biological Effects of Radiation that there is not a safe level of radiation.Low protracted doses of radiation cause physiological damage through the formation of free radicals. A free radical is a molecule with an imbalance in electrons that can destabilize other molecules resulting in cellular damage and disease.In high,
short doses of
radiation like
that associated with the Hiroshima bomb blast, radiation primarily causes
direct damage to the nucleus of cells where the genes are located that
control the functioning of the cell.
In contrast, low doses of
radiation acting continuously over time produce their damage indirectly through the
generation of free radicals that destroy cell-membranes, hundreds to
thousands of times more efficiently than might be expected in calculations
related to high-dose radiation damage.
The everyday amount of radiation that is released as part of the normal
operation of the world's nuclear power plants is a very grave concern.
Nuclear power plants must have releases in order to function, and these
releases, even though they may be partially filtered, allow radiation to
go into our air, drinking
water, onto farmland, and into our food.
The
everyday releases of low-level radioactivity by nuclear power plants has
been found to cause several kinds of health damage including premature
births, congenital defects, infant mortality, mental retardation, heart
ailments, arthritis, diabetes, allergies, asthma, cancer, genetic damage, and chronic fatigue syndrome.
It has been linked
to previously unknown infectious diseases, and the
resurgence of old infectious diseases by damaging the developing white blood cells
originating in the bone marrow and thus weakening the immune system. Dr.
Sternglass conjectures what could happen: "With countless thousands
of persons having a weaker and weaker immune system as the result of
increasing radioactive contamination of the air and food chain, an AIDS
mutation-like disease could become a new Black Plague. The EPA maintains a set of so-called "Protective Action Guides". These "Protective Action Guides" are being quickly revised to radically increase the allowable levels of iodine-131 (a radioactive isotope) to anywhere from 3,000 to 100,000 times the currently allowable levels.Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility is all over this issue, having obtained internal emails because of a Freedom of Information Act request . The internal emails reveal shocking betrayal inside the EPA. For example, under the newly-revised "Protective Action Guides", drinking just one glass of water considered "safe" by the EPA could subject you to the lifetime limit of radiation.Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility goes on to say that the newly-revised "Protective Action Guides" would allow long-term cleanup limits thousands of times more lax than anything EPA has ever before accepted. These new limits could result in cancer for one in four persons exposed.These new "Protective Action Guides" would vastly increase the allowable levels of radiation in soil and food. When the radioactive fallout from Fukushima’s massive release of raw radioactive water begins to rain down upon the West Coast, the EPA can officially announce that all the radiation is "below accepted limits". It would be "below accepted limits" because the EPA raised "accepted limits" by as much as 100,000 times!
(3) MUTATED BACTERIA AND VIRUS It is well known that radiation can cause mutations in bacteria and viruses. Andrei Sakharov, the famous Russian physicist, described in his 1992 memoirs that even at low levels radiation could increase mutations of bacteria and viruses. His predictions originally made in 1958) have come true, and we are seeing new ailments such as Reyes Syndrome that first appeared in 1963, and Legionnaire's Disease that is caused by a bacteria that was not threatening prior to 1976. AIDS may be related to a mutated virus combined with weakened immunity in a generation born after the first nuclear weapons were detonated. Of particular interest is Lyme Disease that first appeared in 1975 near the Millstone and Haddam Neck nuclear power plants in Connecticut. Dr. Jay Gould in Deadly Deceit (1990, Four Walls, Eight Windows) wrote: "In 1975 there were 59 cases of Lyme Disease recorded; in 1985 the number increased to 863, mainly in two counties: Middlesex County, Connecticut, and New London County, Connecticut, near the Millstone Nuclear Power Plant. Just as increases in cancer may be linked to the huge radiation release from Millstone in 1975, so too may be the tick-borne Lyme Disease epidemic. The Lyme Disease is carried by a spirochete that had not been as harmful to humans prior to 1975. It is well known that radiation can cause mutations in bacteria. The enormous 1975 Millstone radiation release may have caused just such a mutation in the tick-borne spirochete".We have a double challenge — the weaker immune system, and the new diseases resulting from mutated pathogens. Dr. Ernest Sternglass explains: "When the radiation from such isotopes as strontium-89 and 90 in the bone marrow mutates an existing virus that invades the T-cells of the immune system and kills them in the process of replication, the stage is set for the complete collapse of the immune defenses, and resulting death from opportunistic infections or cancer". ("The Implications of Chernobyl for Human Health", International Journal of Biosocial Research, page 19, July 1986)
(4)OZONE BREAKDOWN The protective layer of ozone around the Earth filters solar and cosmic rays from reaching our planet. Ozone surrounds the Earth in a layer between six and thirty miles above sea level. It is formed when light rays strike molecules of oxygen, 02, and cause them to break into two separate oxygen atoms, 0 and 0. An atom of oxygen then combines with a molecule of oxygen and forms ozone which is 03. It breaks down again and then recombines again, and so on, unless it is interfered with. An article in the German publication Strahlentelex (March 3, 1994) explains that the nuclear industry is responsible for the ozone hole. The authors, Giebel and Sternglass explain that radioactive gases like krypton-85 from nuclear plants and from the nuclear fuel recycling plants go up to the stratosphere where they create water droplets from the moisture that in turn form ice crystals that accelerate the destruction of ozone by fluorohydrocarbons.
(5) LOSS OF OXYGEN GLOBALLY Walter Russell, a visionary artist and scientist, predicted in his book Atomic Suicide published in 1957 that due to man-made radioactivity we would experience a loss of oxygen in the air that we breathe. In a similar way to the predictions of Andrei Sakharov in the 1950's, Walter Russell's foresight is now coming true. Based on information believed to be accurate, the percentage of oxygen in the air of Planet Earth in 1950 was 21 percent, and the percentage of oxygen in the air in some areas of Planet Earth in 1997 was 19 percent. (BioTech News 1997) 21% normal The analysis of encapsulated air in fossils found on Planet Earth shows that the percentage of oxygen in the air of Planet Earth has been as high as 38 percent and as low as 12 percent. Birds can thrive with at least a 12 percent oxygen level; humans can thrive with at least a 20 percent oxygen level, and humans probably would function better if the oxygen level were between 28 percent and 38 percent. If the oxygen level were over 38 percent, humans probably would not function as well, and 100 percent oxygen would be harmful. The air on Planet Earth is 80 percent nitrogen, 19 percent oxygen, and 1 percent other gases such as carbon dioxide. When a human breathes, about 40 percent of the oxygen is converted to carbon dioxide. This small amount of carbon dioxide is converted to oxygen by forests and ocean plankton. When people talk about excessive amounts of carbon dioxide in the air causing global warming, they are talking about carbon dioxide produced by burning fossil fuels such as gasoline and natural gas. Kern County, California, is one of the most industrialized locations in the world. Huge amounts of fossil fuels such as oil and natural gas are burned in this area to provide electricity for the oil fields in Kern County and to provide electricity for the Los Angeles area of California. Kern County is one of the worst areas of the world regarding ozone content and regarding oxygen content. Measurements of oxygen as low as 12 percent have been made in heavily industrialized areas. It is common for persons in some areas of Kern County to experience a generalized lack of well-being because of low oxygen content in the air, and to have to take about three deep breaths in order to get the same effect that one deep breath used to provide. In 1960 an airline pilot was required by law to use breathing apparatus if the oxygen content of the air in the airplane were below 19.5 percent; federal authorities believed a 19.5 percent oxygen level was necessary for the pilot to be fully alert and functional while piloting the airplane. In 1970 occupational safety health rules required a breathing apparatus when oxygen was 19.5 percent or less. Because of internal combustion engines that use oxygen from the air, because of electrical generating plants that use oxygen from the air, because more and more trees are lost each year because of nuclear pollution, and because more and more ocean plankton are lost each year, the oxygen content of the air of Planet Earth goes down each year. The resulting oxygen-depleted condition is a contributing cause of the generalized lack of well-being that many are experiencing. And it does not look good for the future. Trees and green plants provide about half of our oxygen, and plankton provide most of the rest of our oxygen. Phytoplankton, that are the base of the marine food chain, is declining. Various studies confirm this: Plankton in parts of the Antarctic Ocean has declined about 12 percent. (S. Weiler. Testimony to Senate Commerce Committee, November 15, 1991) Trees absorb radioactive carbon-14 in place of stable forms of carbon, and in this way trees are gradually killed. The book, The Petkau Effect, by Ralph Graeub tells how radioactivity has harmed trees and forests: "It is assumed that the decisive physiological damage resulting in current forest death must have begun during the 1950's. This is depicted in a reduction in density and width of tree rings, and in reduced growth, is true in the Northern Hemisphere and in the Himalayas.... Neither aging, location, nor climate can be considered as the possible sole cause of damage.... The growth ring of a tree shows exactly what effects the tree has experienced, both in terms of time and seriousness.... During the 1950's and 1960's, there must have been a global wave of air pollution that caused the initial damage". The author, Ralph Graeub, speculates that it could not be just the usual chemicals that are so damaging the trees. And he explains that these trees are mainly within the 30th to 60th parallels of northern latitude. "This zone contains the most nuclear power plants and almost all nuclear reprocessing centers. Also, the vast majority of nuclear weapons tests occurred in this area".Because the US federal government is responsible for the creation of the US nuclear industry, and because the US federal government helped some foreign nations (including Japan) to create nuclear industries, the US federal government is the primary cause of most nuclear pollution of Planet Earth. Nuclear pollution causes a drop each year in the percentage of oxygen in the air of Planet Earth. A book written in 1957 by Walter Russell (Atomic Suicide) presents evidence that nuclear pollution will cause the percentage of oxygen in the air of Planet Earth to fall below the level needed by humans to survive on Planet Earth without special breathing equipment. There is a realistic probability that human life as we now know it on Planet Earth will cease to exist by 2200 because of insane and irresponsible actions of the US federal government. There are outstanding individuals in the US working to solve environmental problems. David Rockefeller probably has done more good for the US than any other US citizen regarding environmental problems. David Rockefeller has brought together groups of outstanding individuals who can help solve problems. These outstanding men are advisors; they have little, if any, political power, and they try to educate those in positions of political power. Some of the men in these groups are offered jobs in government because of the high quality information they can provide. |