“Patronizing silence” from officials about Fukushima contamination in West Coast seafood; It’s downright irresponsible, they are telling us nothing — Expert: “There is a real cause for concern”

Newspaper: “Patronizing silence” from officials about Fukushima contamination in West Coast seafood; It’s downright irresponsible, they are telling us nothing — Expert: “There is a real cause for concern” (VIDEO) (ENENews, Nov 9, 2013):

Coast Reporter, Sunshine Coast, BC, Nov. 8, 2013: […] The October issue of Pacific Fishing magazine takes on the “unscrupulous activists” and “Web bloggeristas,” quoting headlines that are “just plain wrong,” including this killer-diller: “At the very least, your days of eating Pacific Ocean fish are over.” […] The October Pacific Fishing article fights back with the headline: “They say radiation will poison your catch! Thing is, they’re lying.” […] A test of 27 albacore found “detectable radiation” in 60 to 70 per cent […] The article provides a healthy dose of sanity to the debate, but in its eagerness to refute the doomsters, it unfortunately minimizes the scope of the catastrophe. In July, the government of Japan admitted that the crippled nuclear complex had been leaking radioactive water daily into the Pacific Ocean since the disaster began […] the figure that was put out there was 300 tonnes per day. […] The Pacific Fishing article acknowledges there were early discharges into the sea, but quantifies the scale of the contamination by focusing on the impact of the single 300-tonne leak announced in August. As a result, the article leaves the reader still wondering. […] the people who are best positioned to know — the senior governments and their teams of scientists — are telling us nothing. Everything is fine, they say. And that’s it. It’s not enough. The fishing industry needs some damage control here. The people need some answers, including real data and real analysis. This patronizing silence is downright irresponsible.

See also: More US tuna contaminated — Study: Entire food web “including humans” may be affected as Fukushima radionuclides spread to West Coast

The Real News, Nov. 8, 2013 — Arjun Makhijani, President of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, Ph.D. in engineering (specialization: nuclear fusion) from the University of California at Berkeley: […] if there are people who are panicking and talking about evacuations and so on on the West Coast, I think that that is out of proportion. But at the same time, there is a real cause for concern, because, as we know, there are hundred of tons of radioactive water that are flowing into the ocean every day […] Some fish do cross the ocean that initially would get their food near the Fukushima site or off the east coast of Japan. And radioactivity of Fukushima origin has been detected at elevated levels. […] it’s important to remember that every little bit of radiation creates an increment of cancer risk. […] if there are small doses in large populations, then you could get significant numbers of cancers, even if you the individual risk is low. I think the U.S. Food and Drug Administration should be monitoring the food, fish especially, much more intensively and making those results public, both because there is some physical concern, and there is some stress among the population from not knowing. […] I would be careful, especially if I were a pregnant women, about the provenance of my fish. […]

Watch the extended interview with Arjun Makhijani here

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