– Navy Times: Now 70+ men & women report suffering from Fukushima radiation — Testicle removal, optic nerve removal, leukemias, polyps… were in their early 20s with good health (VIDEO) (ENENews, Dec 28, 2013):
Navy Times, Dec. 28, 2013: A group of sailors who were aboard the aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan as it rendered aid in the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear power plant meltdown in Japan nearly three years ago […] say they’ve suffered since their radiation exposure. […] the attorney [Paul C. Garner] now has 71 plaintiffs listed, with myriad health issues. […] Garner estimated about one-third of the plaintiffs remain on active duty, adding that one is still assigned to the Reagan. […] A spokesman for the Navy […] said Reagan crew members weren’t exposed to enough radiation to cause long-term health effects […] aircrews delivering supplies to Fukushima were given medication to stave off thyroid gland exposure to radiation, and the ships were monitored for levels of radioactivity […]
Attorney Paul C. Garner, environmental law expert: “The TEPCO people […] certainly knew the severity of what was happening, because now you have radiological releases into the environment […] Leukemias, bleeding, thyroid problems, polyps, testicle removal, optic nerve removal […] the list goes on and on, unfortunately. […] It’s hard to imagine that all of these people are suffering now when they were all basically in their early 20s, in good health, and looking forward to life […] it should really be a situation where the naysayers have to demonstrate that it did no harm to these people.”
Navy spokesman Lt. Greg Raelson: “For perspective, the worst-case radiation exposure for a crew member on USS Ronald Reagan is less than 25 percent of the annual radiation exposure to a member of the U.S. public from natural sources of background radiation, such as the sun, rocks and soil.”
Marco Kaltofen, registered professional civil engineer consulting for the Boston Chemical Data Corporation: “Has anyone heard the radiation in Japan being compared to say taking a flight from Los Angeles to Washington D.C.? O.K. How about to eating a banana? Has anyone heard this one? […] So what we are talking about here is a slightly different kind of radiation, where we are looking at a lot of concentrated radiation in a very small particle. So the total amount of radiation we are exposed to might in fact be low, but because we are exposing only a small number of tissues, for instance, for a respirable dust particle, we inhale the dust particle that is radioactive. It actually is about the same scale of size as a cell in the human body. So that radioactive particle is adjacent to a cell that is going to stay there because it has a long residence time. And so to that particular cell, that is not a very low dose. In fact, that is a high dose, it is actually even a lethal dose to that cell.”